Gasman2014/KiCad-Diff

KiCad 6: Error in pcbnew when calling `plotpcb` (create wxApp before calling this)

Closed this issue · 53 comments

edahlseng commented

I'm trying to run plotpcb, but getting an error in what I think is the pcbnew library. I'm seeing the following error message printed out multiple times:

./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this

Do you know what might be causing this?

Gasman2014 commented

What version of KiCad are you running? I have not been testing this against
5.99 yet

edahlseng commented

Ah, yes, this is against 5.99.

Gasman2014 commented

Yeah, the Python API has been in a state of flux in 5.99 - tbh I haven't tried to fix this until it was a bit more stable. The diff only needs access to the plotting routines which should be exposed without creating a wx interface, so (hopefully) should be an easyish fix. I'll try and take a look at this a bit later.

leoheck commented

@edahlseng check if this helps you with something #55

edahlseng commented

I tried this again now that KiCad 6 is out, but it looks like it's still failing. I see what I think may be a new error line before the error messages I mentioned earlier (though very similar):

Plot1 error: ./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
leoheck commented

OS?

leoheck commented

It works for me on Linux. I also have some changes to push I am just not sure if they change much. I am also using another solution to fix the generated svg images since the SVG generated by Kicad is not well-formed.

edahlseng commented

macOS. I think I saw in another issue comment that @Gasman2014 was also having issues with macOS. Interestingly, I think that earlier 5.99 versions of KiCad from a couple of months ago were generating images properly despite the error messages. With v6, that no longer appears to be the case. If anyone has pointers on where to look for this I’d be happy to poke around.

leoheck commented

plotPCB.py has the macos path hardcoded. It may be related.
What is the output running this command? Replace the [board_name] with yours, please.

plotpcb [board_name].kicad_pcb
edahlseng commented

I'm installing with this method, which runs plotpcb under a virtual environment created from the KiCad bundled python.

Here's what I get when running that command:

› plotpcb [board_name].kicad_pcb 
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this

Board version: 20211014

 # ID Name         Filename
./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this
 1  0 TOP          [board_name]-00-TOP.svg
 2  1 GND1         [board_name]-01-GND1.svg
 3  2 24V & 3_3V   [board_name]-02-24V & 3_3V.svg
 4  3 -10V & 5V    [board_name]-03--10V & 5V.svg
 5  4 GND2         [board_name]-04-GND2.svg
 6 31 BOTTOM       [board_name]-31-BOTTOM.svg
 7 34 B_Paste      [board_name]-34-B_Paste.svg
 8 35 F_Paste      [board_name]-35-F_Paste.svg
 9 36 B_Silkscreen [board_name]-36-B_Silkscreen.svg
10 37 F_Silkscreen [board_name]-37-F_Silkscreen.svg
11 38 B_Mask       [board_name]-38-B_Mask.svg
12 39 F_Mask       [board_name]-39-F_Mask.svg
13 40 Specs        [board_name]-40-Specs.svg
14 44 Edge_Cuts    [board_name]-44-Edge_Cuts.svg
15 45 Margin       [board_name]-45-Margin.svg
16 46 B_Courtyard  [board_name]-46-B_Courtyard.svg
17 47 F_Courtyard  [board_name]-47-F_Courtyard.svg

I do see SVGs being created for all of the layers, but they're all blank SVGs.

leoheck commented

I do see SVGs being created for all of the layers, but they're all blank SVGs.

Dude, please. What is the name of your board? This does not look right. Review my message. Also review the command, please.

If anyone has pointers on where to look for this I’d be happy to poke around.

I feel it happens on linux too. Svg from Kicad plotter is not well-formed I think.
You could file a bug report.

Also, try this branch to see if it improves something for you. BUT FIRST, try to fix the command above. Your board is not [board_name] unless you are playing a trick on us.
https://github.com/leoheck/KiCad-Diff/tree/improve-svg

To try svg optimization you will have to install svgo and have it available in our PATH
And you will have to call kidiff or plotpcb with -x

edahlseng commented

Also, try this branch to see if it improves something for you. BUT FIRST, try to fix the command above. Your board is not [board_name] unless you are playing a trick on us.

No tricks, I just redacted the board name from my output. Everything I pasted above is an exact copy-and-paste from what I ran, except I replaced my actual board name with [board_name].

leoheck commented

Dude, focus, please, is it working or not? Does it help or not? What is the output of the command with the right board name?

edahlseng commented

Dude, focus, please, is it working or not? Does it help or not? What is the output of the command with the right board name?

Please re-read my previous two messages. The output I pasted above was run on an existing board, I just redacted what I posted. The tool is not working, as only blank SVGs are being output.

leoheck commented

I see. I don't have a macOS and this looks like a specific issue with macOS. On Linux it kind of working. It is not perfect I think, but it does not give me those messages. Have you reported this on Kicad's GitLab or posted this on Kicad forum?

edahlseng commented

I have not yet, but I can! Do you have any pointers into this codebase on key lines that I could pull out into a minimally reproducible example to post?

leoheck commented

Post your issue in the Forum first to start this discussion. Maybe someone knows how to fix this. Or file a report directly in Gitlab exactly as you are doing here. I don't have this issue. I am not a macOS user. If you post the forum post or GitLab issue here, I bet John may joining to the discussion too.

leoheck commented

Kicad 6.0.1 was released. Could you check if this is still happening there?

leoheck commented

I also see some messages but the files are being generated, as you can see.
image

leoheck commented

This is Kicad's version I have installed 6.0.1-79c1e3a40b~116~ubuntu21.10.1

leoheck commented

@edahlseng this branch was improved a bit. It is working for me on a Macbook Air (M1) as you can see the screenshot here
https://github.com/leoheck/KiCad-Diff/tree/improve-svg

image

I don't think it needs the new Kicad 6.0.1 but it is to to upgrade it anyways.

Gasman2014 commented

Just been looking at the codebase and see that JPCharras merged this a couple of weeks ago which might address the svg rendering issues. It seems to set the default svg precision to 4 digits in the mantissa and I think the overflow might be causing problems.

At present, I can only get good rendering in Chrome. Firefox is sort of OK (as you show above) and Safari is still broken. setSvgPrecision doesn't seem to work, whatever I do.

Use 4 digits in mantissa as default and when exporting SVG.
Allow 0 as line width: this is the right value to draw filled shapes with no outline thickness.

https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/blob/master/pcbnew/pcb_plot_params.cpp

I think there will be a 6.0.2 (and prob a 6.0.3 bug fix) - I hope but am not sure if this will make the cut.

FWIW I was also going to reformat everything so that its PEP8 compliant.

leoheck commented

The fix or workaround from Kicad team would be better because the fix I created is not good at all, it is a nonsmart fix that may fail sometimes. To properly fix it I would be required to use a SVG parser instead. And also, it is being applied with an external script. It would be better to have this implemented in python directly.

Allow 0 as line width: this is the right value to draw filled shapes with no outline thickness.

This comment here may be something interesting to play with. The line width function changed its name, and maybe its functionality from the previous Kicad.

@Gasman2014 can we work to merge my last PR before we do this PEP8 thing? I can also apply the PEP8 if you are ok with it, after. I did not do that before because PEP8 is pretty rigorous, and a bit annoying sometimes, but it may support a config file that we can customize its behavior a bit.

leoheck commented

@Gasman2014 Kicad 6.0.2 is already available https://www.kicad.org/blog/2022/02/KiCad-6.0.2-Release/. Tried here removing my workarounds and it still does not work for Firefox. It may not work for Safari too.

Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

Could you update me, when possible, with the issues you are having?

Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

Ok, I am going to create a new user on my macOS to see if I can reproduce this.

Now, you are running it a bit differently than what I am expecting.
I recommend you to setup the environment first, and then call kidiff with the kidiff (bash script) that is going to be available in your PATH.

Why? Because it is going to call it using the Python interpreter that comes with Kicad (as we used to do). Maybe that python has something different than the system's interpreter that is indicated by the the kidiff.py file

Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

The only thing I could find is that our first line uses env. QUICK1’s uses python3 directly.
Can you test changing this while I don't have the environment ready?
image

leoheck commented

On macos even the Finder cannot preview the right content of the generated file. This is something Kicad team does not know.
Screen Shot 2022-02-14 at 17 38 29

This should be the content of the selected file
image

leoheck commented

@Gasman2014 I improved the file picker a bit that was not pretty good for me on macos. Also, fixed the workaround that fixed svg for macos. It is working better on Safari. But the main diff window is still not being displayed. Still could not close that small window. And I could not recreate your issue here yet.

Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

I created a new user. Had to install brew again. I cloned the repo. Loaded the environment with source env.sh and could not see the issue.

This is the best I could do on this mac, since I cannot format it. I have others Macbooks at my work, that I can format but this will take some times, since I am in quarantine recovering from Covid.

But we could try to compare some environment settings.
Can you share the output of some commands so we can try to identify differences?

This is the output of the command env

TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
SHELL=/bin/zsh
TERM=xterm-256color
TMPDIR=/var/folders/58/qpbzfk3n3mn2srm0rrnl1zvm0000gq/T/
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=443
TERM_SESSION_ID=98B9926E-4331-403C-B5E0-745BF564A232
USER=lheckk
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.sSXN3Mhhy2/Listeners
PATH=/Users/lheckk/Documents/KiCad-Diff/bin:/Users/lheckk/Documents/KiCad-Diff/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
__CFBundleIdentifier=com.apple.Terminal
PWD=/Users/lheckk/Documents/KiCad-Diff
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
SHLVL=1
HOME=/Users/lheckk
LOGNAME=lheckk
OLDPWD=/Users/lheckk/Documents/KiCad-Diff
HOMEBREW_PREFIX=/opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CELLAR=/opt/homebrew/Cellar
HOMEBREW_REPOSITORY=/opt/homebrew
MANPATH=/opt/homebrew/share/man::
INFOPATH=/opt/homebrew/share/info:
TK_SILENCE_DEPRECATION=1
LC_CTYPE=UTF-8
_=/usr/bin/env

This is which python, python3 and pythonw

lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % which python
/usr/bin/python
lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % which python3
/opt/homebrew/bin/python3
lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % which pythonw 
/usr/bin/pythonw

These are the versions of each of these things

lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % python --version
Python 2.7.18
lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % python3 --version
Python 3.9.10
lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % pythonw --version
Python 2.7.18

This compare the paths to see if they are symbolic links and if they point to the same file

lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % ls -ltr $(which python)
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  75 Feb  6 18:22 /usr/bin/python -> ../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2.7
lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % ls -ltr $(which python3)
lrwxr-xr-x  1 lheckk  admin  39 Jan 19 03:40 /opt/homebrew/bin/python3 -> ../Cellar/python@3.9/3.9.10/bin/python3
lheckk@pipinho KiCad-Diff % ls -ltr $(which pythonw)
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  76 Feb  6 18:22 /usr/bin/pythonw -> ../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/pythonw2.7

Launching kidiff only, launches the Finder showing only project files. This is nice.
image

Then the commit selection window (this is still ugly, but did not try to improve it for Mac, yet)
image

Then this is Safari working just fine with the fixed version of the workaround
image

Here the triptych
image

Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

Hey John, Here with me it is the same version. M1 running the latest Monterey. I also installed it when the machine was pretty clean. This means I installed brew and wxwidgest at the same time.
The interesting thing here is that my python3 is the one from homebrew while python (2.17) and pythonw are pointing to the same binary, so they are the same thing. But KicadDiff uses python3. When you have a chance, check from where your python3 comes.

Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented
Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

What does it show for which pythonw after disabling conda? Also, I forget to check, which versoion is used when I call kidiff directly.

Can you add this in your kidiff.py and launch it to see what it is going to show.

import sys
print(sys.version)

I think a good place to put this is in the first line under the __main__()

Gasman2014 commented
Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

I’m going to PM you my env via the Forum as I don’t want to post it here.

Fair, you can also remove some lines that are sensitive if you feel that they don't contribute to this issue.

leoheck commented

Check this line here
image

From here, https://wiki.wxpython.org/wxPythonVirtualenvOnMac

You may have been running an initial build of a tool. You mention that you have synced or upgraded your mac with an old install right? I always do a clean install, and this may be happening because of that. Now, how do we fix this?

leoheck commented

I am also using the same version

➜ kidiff board.kicad_pcb -r
/opt/homebrew/opt/python@3.9/bin/python3.9
3.9.10 (main, Jan 15 2022, 11:40:53) 
[Clang 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.3)]

I also added this line print(sys.executable) to check from where the interpreter is comming.

leoheck commented

These are the relevant brew things I have installed to make this work.

➜ history | grep brew
    3  brew update
    4  brew upgrade
  204  brew install scour
  325  brew install wxwidgets
  341  brew install wxpython
  427  brew install librsvg
  432  brew install gsed
  458  brew install dos2unix
leoheck commented

These are all brew things I have installed

➜ brew leaves | xargs -n1 brew desc

dockutil: Tool for managing dock items
dos2unix: Convert text between DOS, UNIX, and Mac formats
gh: GitHub command-line tool
git: Distributed revision control system
gnu-sed: GNU implementation of the famous stream editor
librsvg: Library to render SVG files using Cairo
scour: SVG file scrubber
wxpython: Python bindings for wxWidgets
wxwidgets: Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit
leoheck commented

I would ask you to reinstall python3 too

brew reinstall python3

For some reason I got this msg, maybe I have installed it with sudo by mistake.
I had to fix the issue with the following instructions

Error: The following directories are not writable by your user:
/opt/homebrew
/opt/homebrew/share/zsh
/opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions
/opt/homebrew/var/homebrew/locks

You should change the ownership of these directories to your user.
  sudo chown -R $(whoami) /opt/homebrew /opt/homebrew/share/zsh /opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions /opt/homebrew/var/homebrew/locks

And make sure that your user has write permission.
  chmod u+w /opt/homebrew /opt/homebrew/share/zsh /opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions /opt/homebrew/var/homebrew/locks
leoheck commented

Ah, reinstall these 2, too

brew resintall wxwidgets
brew reinstall wxpython
leoheck commented

Do not forget these 2

brew update
brew upgrade
Gasman2014 commented
Gasman2014 commented
leoheck commented

I don't have any issue related to path on Linux.

This is running Inside the repo

➜  pwd
/home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
➜  assoc-board git:(main) ✗ kidiff board.kicad_pcb    

      SCM Selected: git 
  Kicad Board Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board/board.kicad_pcb
Kicad Project Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
         REPO Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
 Kicad Project Dir: .
   Board File Name: board.kicad_pcb
        Output Dir: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board/.kidiff

Commit 1 (a): board.kicad_pcb
Commit 2 (b): 5be11dd | 2021-12-29 14:58:15 -0300 | Leandro Heck | Update 3d models dir variable

Starting webserver at http://127.0.0.1:9092/web/index.html
(Hit Ctrl+C to exit)
^C

This is running Outside the Repo

➜  assoc-board git:(main) ✗ cd ..
➜  pwd
/home/lheck/Documents/
➜  Documents kidiff assoc-board/board.kicad_pcb    

      SCM Selected: git 
  Kicad Board Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board/board.kicad_pcb
Kicad Project Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
         REPO Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
 Kicad Project Dir: .
   Board File Name: board.kicad_pcb
        Output Dir: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board/.kidiff

Commit 1 (a): board.kicad_pcb
Commit 2 (b): 5be11dd | 2021-12-29 14:58:15 -0300 | Leandro Heck | Update 3d models dir variable

Starting webserver at http://127.0.0.1:9092/web/index.html
(Hit Ctrl+C to exit)
^C

And, this is running on a completely different path

➜  Documents cd /tmp    
➜  pwd
/tmp
➜  /tmp kidiff ~/Documents/assoc-board/board.kicad_pcb

      SCM Selected: git 
  Kicad Board Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board/board.kicad_pcb
Kicad Project Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
         REPO Path: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board
 Kicad Project Dir: .
   Board File Name: board.kicad_pcb
        Output Dir: /home/lheck/Documents/assoc-board/.kidiff

Commit 1 (a): board.kicad_pcb
Commit 2 (b): 5be11dd | 2021-12-29 14:58:15 -0300 | Leandro Heck | Update 3d models dir variable

Starting webserver at http://127.0.0.1:9092/web/index.html
(Hit Ctrl+C to exit)
^C

You can see all PATH output from Kica-Diff shows the same address.
Also, you can pass the flag -r to make sure the .kidiff folder is being deleted before kidiff starts to make sure the old files are gone.

I have no idea how, but it runs perfectly on my macOS. However, I haven't tested running it from other places like outside of the repo. I still want to get a clean macOS to validate this, or to create a process so you can at least try something different.

Also, I was testing this on Windows this time, and there the GUI looks good as it is on Linux. I have no idea why the GUI is so ugly on macOS too. But if you run with the brew's interpreter it at least inherits the dark theme from the OS.

Capture