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KiCad Revision Inspector (KiRI)

KiRI started as a script to experiment having a visual diff tool for KiCad projects including schematics and layouts. After some time, it became an interesting and it is still being updated.

Currently, KiRi supports KiCad >= 5.

Internally it uses existing tools to generate svg images of schematics and layouts to be compared.

In this way, when exporting schematics, if:

  • KiCad 7/8 is installed, the kicad-cli is used.
  • KiCad 6 is installed (which does not have kicad-cli available), schematics are exported using xdotool on Linux/Windows and cliclick on macOS, using the GUI. This method is far from the ideal and it is not recommended.
  • KiCad 5 is installed or if the projects is based on KiCad 5, plotkicadsch/plotgitsch are used to export the schematics.

However, when exporting the layout layers:

  • Kicad-Diff is used for all supported KiCad versions using pcbnew library available in python. It is also possible to use kicad-cli to export the layout layers however this process is slower than using Kicad-Diff.

KiRI Installation

Check the Installation instructions, here.

Using KiRI

KiRI can be launched with the following command, anywhere, inside or outside of the repository of the project.

kiri [OPTIONS] [KICAD_PROJECT_FILE]

KICAD_PROJECT_FILE can be passed, but it can also be omitted. If running from inside the project's repository, it will use the .pro or .kicad_pro available. If both are present (which is not good), it will ask your choice. The same happens is running outside of the repository without passing the KICAD_PROJECT_FILE.

Command line options (aka Help)

Command line flags can be seen using the -h flag

kiri -h

Archiving generated files

There is a possibility to archive generated files (check the help above).

To visualize generated files it is not necessary to have KiRI installed. You just have to unpack the generated package and then execute the web-server script (./kiri-server) inside of the folder, as shown below:

tar -xvzf kiri-2021.11.18-16h39.tgz
cd kiri
./kiri-server .

KiCad Integration

It is possible to integrate KiRI with PCBNew by adding a button to its toolbar with the following command:

# Create folder if it does not exist
mkdir -p "~/.kicad/scripting/plugins"

# Copy the plugin there
cd ./kiri
cp -r "./kicad/plugin/kiri_v6/" "~/.kicad/scripting/plugins/kiri"

KiRI Screenshots

Browsing the schematic view walking through and comparing each page of the schematics, individually.

Schematic View

Browsing the layout view walking through and comparing each layer of the layout, individually.

Layout View

Here is the comparison of the schematics when the project is updated from using KiCad 5 (.sch) to KiCad 6 (.kicad_sch).

Layout View

Shortcuts are a really good way of walking through the commits, pages and layers quickly. Check the available shortcuts by hitting the shortcut i.

Layout View

A quick and old demo on the Youtube.

KiCad Revision Inspector Demo

Are you enjoying using this tool, feel free to pay me a beer :). Cheers!