The default installation of KiCad on Linux will not actually store local copies of the KiCad default footprints. Instead, each time you run CvPCB to associate footprints to components, KiCad runs a script to download a zip of the relevant footprint libraries from Github directly. The pros to this method is that you’ll always work with the latest footprints. The cons: you must have an internet connection! This is impractical for me when I’m in for a long train ride.
Here’s the method for working with KiCad offline.
The KiCad footprints are available as separate repositories online, one repo per library. To use KiCad footprints offline, you’ll need to
- download each of these repositories (use the library-repos-install.sh script!) to a known directory
- edit the KIGITHUB environment variable (located in /etc/profile.d/kicad.sh) to point to that directory
- in your library table (in CvPCB), change the plugin type to KiCad, instead of Github.
From one perspective, it makes a lot of sense to mandate an internet connection when doing PCB design. I’ll almost always need to reference another datasheet, schematic, or package dimension–all reasons to have the internet handy. Nevertheless, I hope this method for offline KiCad work helps everyone else who’s laying out PCBs on their train-ride commute!