KiCad Rust API

Allows you to develop add-ons and tools that interact with a running instance of KiCad. This library is built against the official KiCad IPC API.

For more information about the IPC API, please see the KiCad developer documentation.

use kicad::KiCad;

fn main() {
    let k = KiCad::new(KiCadConnectionConfig {
        client_name: String::from("version-example"),
        ..Default::default()
    })
    .expect("KiCad not running!");

    println!("Connected to KiCad {}", k.get_version().unwrap());
}

Documentation

There is no documentation yet, sorry. The first priority of the team is completing the KiCad side of the new IPC API, and enabling a smooth transition for users of the existing SWIG Python bindings. If you are interested in contributing to the Rust bindings, please get in touch!

Contributing

At the moment, these bindings are being developed in parallel with the IPC API itself, and development is being coordinated by the KiCad team (main point of contact: Jon Evans / @craftyjon). Expect rapid change and instability during this development period, and please do not send merge requests without discussing your idea for changes with the team ahead of time.

Once the initial stable API is released (planned for KiCad 9.0 in February 2025), this Cargo package will also have its first stable release and be considered ready for general use. Until that time, please consider this a development preview.

Developing

Install pre-commit using pip or your preferred method. Then run pre-commit install to add the pre-commit hooks to your working directory.

The library can be built with a simple cargo build, and examples can be run from cargo as well, e.g. cargo run --example version.