Running KiKit via Docker

This method is applicable to Windows, Linux and MacOS. It provides access to all of the CLI commands in a known-working container, but doesn't allow your local install of KiCad to access KiKit via the KiKit plugin.

First, install Docker. The installation procedure varies by the platform, so Google up a recent guide for your platform.

With Docker you can skip all of the install steps and instead run KiKit via (on Linux or Mac):

docker run -v $(pwd):/kikit yaqwsx/kikit --help

(replacing the call to display the --help with whatever command you want to run. Try --version or panelize)

or on Windows:

docker run -v %cd%:/kikit yaqwsx/kikit --help

Note that on Windows you might have to explicitly allow for mounting directories outside your user account (see the following topic).

Creating an alias to KiKit in Docker to save some typing

If you're on Linux or Mac and are going to run commands repeatedly within the same directory you can create an alias within the current terminal session via:

alias kikit="docker run -v $(pwd):/kikit yaqwsx/kikit"

Note that alias is a Linux/ Unix command so won't work on Windows, you'll need to call docker run -v %cd%:/kikit yaqwsx/kikit each time. Also note that you must update the alias (by running the same alias command again) if you move to a different directory. The current working directory for the alias is "frozen" at the directory you create the alias in.

From then on, until you close that terminal, you'll be able to just run kikit followed by the relevant paramenters (e.g. kikit --version or kikit panelize).

Running different versions of KiKit via Docker

If you would like to run a particular version of KiKit, simply append a tag to the image name (e.g., yaqwsx/kikit:nightly), and Docker will pull that version down and run that for you instead:

docker run -v $(pwd):/kikit yaqwsx/kikit:nightly --version

Mac M1 containers

There are also nightly containers of Mac M1 available with tag nightly-m1.

If you want to use Makefile for your projects, the preferable way is to invoke make inside the container. The Docker image contains several often used tools and you can even run KiCAD from it (if you supply it with X-server). To call make within the container, override the container's entrypoint:

docker run -it -v $(pwd):/kikit --entrypoint '/usr/bin/make' --help

(replacing --help with your make command, such as build or test).