Windows usage via PIP

[Unichord]

Hello,
I'm trying to setup KiBot on Windows 10 via PIP. I installed it pretty seamlessly, but apparently I did/I'm doing something wrong, since the actual command doesn't work as expected and I don't really have experience with Python/PIP and I can't figure out what's wrong.
I'm running the command via the KiCAD 6.0 Command Prompt as Administrator (I also tried as normal user), I already installed all the dependencies, I think, and I also added environment variables.

Also kibot-check doesn't work, it's not recognized as a command, I don't know why. Maybe I'm using it wrong?

I'd like to try once more to make this work, otherwise I'll go with the WSL method. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Here is the command I run: https://pastebin.com/LnXLPjha

I now noticed that KiBot creates this empty folder, I don't know if it's an useful piece of information: C:\Users\Andrea\Documents\Progetti\CLE\FMFR1_PROVA_6.0\Andrea.local\share\kibot\bin

[set-soft]

Hi @Unichord !
Currently KiBot needs WSL or docker to run on Windows.
As you can see KiBot does a lot of things on Windows, but needs more work to be usable. Also: even if we make it usable some stuff won't work. Most things done by KiAuto will still need WSL.

[Unichord]

Hi @set-soft, thanks for the answer (and for KiBot obviously).
I'll try to give WSL a go, I'll follow the guide in this subsection.

[set-soft]

Ok, please comment about any thing that needs to be adjusted in the WSL description. Is new and each system has its own particularities.

[edlongman]

I have been able to somewhat successfully run KiBot in Windows - and it's extremally useful, thank you!

I follow the following process/workarounds

• Setup environment with the KiCad Python 3.9 in the path.
• Install with pip install kibot --no-compile
• I run kibot within Git Bash to use git tools for set_text_variables
• Apply this attached patch to pre_set_text_variables.py

diff --git a/kibot/pre_set_text_variables.py b/kibot/pre_set_text_variables.py
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
index 8043b16..9060376
--- a/pre_set_text_variables.py
+++ b/pre_set_text_variables.py
@@ -119,11 +119,7 @@ class Set_Text_Variables(BasePreFlight):  # noqa: F821
             text = r.text
             if not text and r.command:
                 command = r.command
-                if re_git.search(command):
-                    git_command = self.ensure_tool('git')
-                    command = re_git.sub(r'\1'+git_command+' ', command)
-                cmd = ['/bin/bash', '-c', command]
-                result = run(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, universal_newlines=True)
+                result = run(command, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, universal_newlines=True, shell=True)
                 if result.returncode:
                     logger.error('Failed to execute:\n{}\nreturn code {}'.format(r.command, result.returncode))
                     sys.exit(FAILED_EXECUTE)

• In kibot.yaml use /../ before every dir output to make relative to local directory. (Avoids sub directories of C_/Users/........./Documents/KiCad/... being added

Obviously I still can't use KiAuto outputs, but gerbers, pos, drills and BOM works well.

[edlongman]

Hi @set-soft,
I've got around to testing it and running v1.5.1 (which I think has those changes in it) is at least a partial fix but getting a slightly different error from the following yaml:

preflight:
  set_text_variables:
  # Issue from latest git tag or show draft if no tag.
  - name: "ISSUE"
    command: "git describe --exact-match --tag"

and the errors

DEBUG:Starting tool check for Git (kibot - __init__.py:1434)
DEBUG:- Checking binary tool Git (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- Looking for tool `git` at system level (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- Checking version for `C:\Users\...\Git\mingw64\bin\git.EXE` (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- No particular version needed (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- Running ['C:\\Users\\...\\Git\\mingw64\\bin\\git.EXE', '--version'] (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- Looking for version in `git version 2.38.1.windows.1` (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- Found version (2, 38, 1, 0) (kibot - log.py:124)
DEBUG:- Returning `C:\Users\...\Git\mingw64\bin\git.EXE` (kibot - __init__.py:1434)
WARNING:Trying git command: ['/bin/bash', '-c', 'C:\\Users\\...\\Git\\mingw64\\bin\\git.EXE describe --exact-match --tag'] (kibot - log.py:102)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\Lib\runpy.py", line 197, in _run_module_as_main
    return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,
  ...
  File "C:\Users\...\KiCad\6.0\3rdparty\Python39\site-packages\kibot\pre_base.py", line 78, in run_enabled
    v.apply()
  File "C:\Users\...\KiCad\6.0\3rdparty\Python39\site-packages\kibot\pre_set_text_variables.py", line 126, in apply
    result = run(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, universal_newlines=True)
  File "C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\Lib\subprocess.py", line 505, in run
    with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as process:
  File "C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\Lib\subprocess.py", line 951, in __init__
    self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds,
  File "C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\Lib\subprocess.py", line 1420, in _execute_child
    hp, ht, pid, tid = _winapi.CreateProcess(executable, args,
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

And a new error to do with /dev/null Is this to do with deleting files a Unix way?

DEBUG:Outputs after sorting: [<kibot.out_gerber.Gerber object at 0x000001C409DA2B20>, <kibot.out_gerb_drill.Gerb_Drill object at 0x000
001C409DADC10>, <kibot.out_report.Report object at 0x000001C409DADA60>, <kibot.out_bom.BoM object at 0x000001C409DAD580>, <kibot.out_p
osition.Position object at 0x000001C409DAD7F0>, <kibot.out_pdf_sch_print.PDF_SCH_Print object at 0x000001C409DAD640>, <kibot.out_step.
STEP object at 0x000001C409DAD7C0>] (kibot - __init__.py:1434)
ERROR:Error loading PCB file. Corrupted? (kibot - __init__.py:1475)
ERROR:[Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/null' (kibot - __init__.py:1475)

Worked around this by disabling devnull in hide_stderr() in misc.py and now it produces manufacturing gerbers well.

[set-soft]

Hi @edlongman !

Thanks for testing it!

The first error is related to the assumption that bash is part of the system. The 11773e9 patch fixes it, now we look for Bash and inform if missing.
The second was related to assume that /dev/null is there. Now we ask Python the name of the OS specific file, patch c1f7b8d
Both patches are applied to the dev branch. It currently reports version 1.5.2.

[set-soft]

Is this to do with deleting files a Unix way?

Not, just a mechanism to discard things. KiCad reports some confusing errors (from the wxWidgets lib) that are harmless and we won't to avoid showing them to the user. So we temporally suppress KiCad's messages. In my tests this only worked using very low level stuff, this is because the messages comes from C++ in KiCad, not the Python API.

[edlongman]

Works very nicely thanks! I'll keep testing and hopefully KiCad 7.0 will provide the necessary command interfaces for PDF and step outputs available.

KiBot seems unable to overwrite outputs for some reason so I have to manually delete the exports currently, maybe this is intended behaviour though?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\Lib\runpy.py", line 197, in _run_module_as_main
    return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,
  File "C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\Lib\runpy.py", line 87, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
...
  File "C:\Users\...\KiCad\6.0\3rdparty\Python39\site-packages\kibot\kiplot.py", line 415, in run_output
    out.run(get_output_dir(out.dir, out))
  File "C:\Users\...\KiCad\6.0\3rdparty\Python39\site-packages\kibot\out_base.py", line 189, in run
    self.options.run(self.expand_filename(output_dir, output))
  File "C:\Users\...\KiCad\6.0\3rdparty\Python39\site-packages\kibot\out_any_drill.py", line 180, in run
    os.rename(k_f, f)
FileExistsError: [WinError 183] Cannot create a file when that file already exists: 'C:\\Users\\...\\KiCad Project\\manufacturing\\Part-PTH-drl.gbr' -> 'C:\\Users\\...\\KiCad Project\\manufacturing\\Part-PTH_drill.gbr'

[set-soft]

Hi @edlongman !

Works very nicely thanks! I'll keep testing and hopefully KiCad 7.0 will provide the necessary command interfaces for PDF and step outputs available.

From what I saw in the forum only a few operations will be covered by kicad-cli, but the good thing is that they are moving in the right direction. They rejected cli patches for years.

KiBot seems unable to overwrite outputs for some reason so I have to manually delete the exports currently, maybe this is intended behaviour though?

This seems to be a limitation of the Windows filesystems (rename is not atomic). So now I'm using os.replace instead. The ebabc0b patch should solve it.
Funny thing: I explicitly did the check for back-ups, but not in all the other uses.