Join thousands of other KiCadders supporting the development of KiCad

Donate now to have your donation matched by Far Field Exploits

$57,265
donated
$128,000 TOTAL

Install on Arch Linux

Stable Release

arch package

KiCad is available in extras/kicad.

Tip If you are looking to test out the latest development features we recommend the use of the pre-built Nightly Development Builds, this makes it easier to find and reproduce bugs, and allows coexistance with the stable version.

To install KiCad you can run the following in a terminal:

sudo pacman -Syu kicad
# if you want to install the official libraries (recommended):
sudo pacman -Syu --asdeps kicad-library kicad-library-3d

  • kicad-library: a package containing official footprints, symbols and template for the official library

  • kicad-library-3d: a package containing 3D models for the official library

--asdeps means the packages are installed as a dependecy of KiCad, meaning they will be uninstalled automatically when uninstalling it.

Nightly Development Builds

The nightly development builds are snapshots of the development (master branch) codebase at a specific time. This codebase is under active development, and while we try our best, may contain more bugs than usual. New features added to KiCad can be tested in these builds.

Warning Please read Nightly Builds and Release Candidates for important information about the risks and drawbacks of using nightly builds.
Tip Nightly builds are provided in a separate installation directory. It is possible to install nightly builds at the same time as the stable version.

Nightly development builds are available through the AUR in aur/kicad-nightly. This can be installed manually, you may simplify the installation through the use of an AUR helper, note that this process will compile the package and may take a long time.

Nightly development builds are also available in a binary repository, where they are automatically built periodically kicad-arch-builder

You can have your system fetch and install these builds automatically by configuring pacman (the package manager) and adding the custom repository. To do this you can append this entry to the end of the pacman config file:

/etc/pacman.conf
# Nightly builds for KiCad
[kicad-nightly]
SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
Server = https://kicad.gitlab.io/packaging/kicad-arch/kicad-arch-builder/

Now you can update the package database and install the the latest nightly with:

sudo pacman -Syu kicad-nightly
Warning The builds in this repository are currently not being signed.
Note Currently library packages are not prebuilt due to some constraints and must be installed through the AUR manually.

The nightly packaging scripts are maintained at Gitlab in the kicad-arch-builder repo.

Simple AUR package

A more "bare bones" packages is also availbele in aur/kicad-git to install the latest development branch from source. You are likely better off trying out the above nightly package.

Caution This will conflict with the stable kicad installation.