Getting Started

CMake is the build configuration and makefile generation tool used by KiCad. It is required.

The official source code repository is hosted on GitLab and requires git to get the latest source. If you prefer to use GitHub there is a read only mirror of the official KiCad repository. The previous official hosting location at Launchpad is still active as a mirror. Changes should be submitted as merge requests via GitLab. The development team will not review changes submitted on GitHub or Launchpad as those platforms are mirrors only.

The KiCad source code is documented using Doxygen which parses the KiCad source code files and builds a dependency tree along with the source documentation into HTML. Doxygen is only required if you are going to build the KiCad documentation.

SWIG is used to generate the Python scripting language extensions for KiCad. SWIG is not required if you are not going to build the KiCad scripting extension.

wxWidgets is the graphical user interface (GUI) library used by KiCad. As of version 7.0, KiCad is developed and tested against wxWidgets 3.2. The KiCad team will not perform testing or bugfixing against older versions of wxWidgets, and may inadvertently introduce changes that break compilation or function when building against older versions. We welcome patches to fix build issues against earlier versions of wxWidgets as long as these patches do not change functionality when compiling against more modern versions. These patches should be the minimum necessary to get KiCad working, rather than attempting to backport functionality from the newer wxWidgets API (unless doing so is trivial).

On macOS we use a custom fork of wxWidgets — see the macOS build instructions for details.

The Boost C++ library version 1.71 or greater is required to build KiCad.

The OpenGL Extension Wrangler is an OpenGL helper library used by the KiCad graphics abstraction library (GAL) and is always required to build KiCad.

The ZLib development library is used by KiCad to handle compressed 3d models (.stpz and .wrz files) and is always required to build KiCad.

The OpenGL Mathematics Library is an OpenGL helper library used by the KiCad graphics abstraction library (GAL) and is always required to build KiCad.

The OpenGL Utility Toolkit is an OpenGL helper library used by the KiCad graphics abstraction library (GAL)and is always required to build KiCad.

The Cairo 2D graphics library is used as a fallback rendering canvas when OpenGL is not available and is always required to build KiCad.

The Python programming language is used to provide scripting support to KiCad. It is always required to build KiCad.

The wxPython library is used to provide a scripting console for Pcbnew. It needs to be installed unless the wxPython scripting build configuration option is disabled. When building KiCad with wxPython support, make sure the version of the wxWidgets library and the version of wxPython installed on your system are the same. Mismatched versions have been known to cause runtime issues.

The Curl Multi-Protocol File Transfer Library is used to provide secure internet file transfer access for the Plugin and Content Manager.

Open CASCSADE Technology (OCC) is used to provide support for loading and saving 3D model file formats such as STEP. KiCad requires OCC 7.5.0 or higher. When building OCC locally, use the option BUILD_MODULE_Draw=OFF to make building easier

The KICAD_IPC_API option is used to enable the experimental IPC API server. When this option is enabled, the NNG library must be available.

The KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON option is used to enable building the wxPython interface into Pcbnew including the wxPython console.

The KICAD_SPICE option is used to control if the Spice simulator interface for Eeschema is built. When this option is enabled, it requires Ngspice to be available as a shared library. This option is enabled by default.

The KICAD_USE_OCC is used for the 3D viewer plugin to support STEP and IGES 3D models. Build tools and plugins related to OpenCascade (OCC) are enabled with this option. When enabled it requires OpenCascade to be available. This option is enabled by default.

The KICAD_USE_EGL option switches the OpenGL backend from using X11 bindings to Wayland EGL bindings. This option is only relevant on Linux when running wxWidgets 3.1.5+ with the EGL backend of the wxGLCanvas (which is the default option, but can be disabled in the wxWidgets build).

By default, setting KICAD_USE_EGL will use a in-tree version of the GLEW library (that is compiled with the additional flags needed to run on an EGL canvas) staticly linked into KiCad. If the system version of GLEW supports EGL (it must be compiled with the GLEW_EGL flag), then it can be used instead by setting KICAD_USE_BUNDLED_GLEW to OFF.

The KICAD_WIN32_DPI_AWARE option makes the Windows manifest file for KiCad use a DPI aware version, which tells Windows that KiCad wants Per Monitor V2 DPI awareness (requires Windows 10 version 1607 and later).

KiCad can be compiled with support for several features to aid in the catching and debugging of runtime memory issues

The KiCad source code includes some demos and examples to showcase the program. You can choose whether install them or not with the KICAD_INSTALL_DEMOS option. You can also select where to install them with the KICAD_DEMOS variable. On Linux the demos are installed in $PREFIX/share/kicad/demos by default.

The KICAD_BUILD_QA_TESTS option allows building unit tests binaries for quality assurance as part of the default build. This option is enabled by default.

If this option is disabled, the QA binaries can still be built by manually specifying the target. For example, with make:

For more information about testing KiCad, see [this page](testing.md).

The KiCad version string is defined by the output of git describe --dirty when git is available or the version string defined in CMakeModules/KiCadVersion.cmake with the value of KICAD_VERSION_EXTRA appended to the former. If the KICAD_VERSION_EXTRA variable is not defined, it is not appended to the version string. If the KICAD_VERSION_EXTRA variable is defined it is appended along with a leading '-' to the full version string as follows:

The build script automatically creates the version string information from the Git repository information as follows:

The default KiCad configuration directory is kicad. On Linux this is located at ~/.config/kicad, on MSW, this is C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\kicad and on MacOS, this is ~/Library/Preferences/kicad. Inside the configuration directory, subdirectories will be created for each KiCad minor version, meaning that multiple versions of KiCad can share the same directory.

The base configuration directory can be overridden by specifying the KICAD_CONFIG_DIR string at compile time.

Normally, KiCad needs to be installed before running in order to locate data files and shared libraries. Developers may be interested in running specific KiCad binaries from inside the build directory instead of installing, as this can sometimes be a faster way to test things. The environment variable KICAD_RUN_FROM_BUILD_DIR can be set in order to change how KiCad looks up paths for shared libraries, resources, and other data files. Note that setting this variable does not change how KiCad looks for symbol/footprint/3D model libraries.

KiCad relies on a specific Python version on Windows and macOS. Normally, the path to this Python installation is set by the corresponding packaging scripts for those platforms, but in some situations, it can be preferable to set a custom Python interpreter for development or testing purposes. On Windows, you must set the environment variable KICAD_USE_EXTERNAL_PYTHONHOME in order for KiCad to use the PYTHONHOME environment variable instead of the default (hard-coded) path to Python. This is so that PYTHONHOME set on user machines does not inadvertently break KiCad. See the Windows build instructions for details on how to use this variable to run KiCad from the build directory.