KiCAD nightly builds occasionally return a SwigPyObject from
pcbnew.LoadBoard, and SaveBoard can leave self.board with no method
dispatch as a side-effect of certain sequences (delete_trace + auto-save
is the one users have hit in the wild). Before this fix, open_project
would keep reporting "Opened project: foo.kicad_pcb" while every
subsequent board operation failed with AttributeError on
GetDesignSettings / GetBoardEdgesBoundingBox / GetCurrentViaSize, with
no path to recovery short of restarting the MCP server.
Add two helpers in KiCADInterface:
* _is_board_healthy(board=None) probes for stable BOARD methods
(GetDesignSettings, GetBoardEdgesBoundingBox, GetFileName) — these
are missing on a dehydrated SwigPyObject, so hasattr() catches the
state without segfaulting.
* _safe_load_board(path) wraps pcbnew.LoadBoard, checks health, and
on dehydration reloads the pcbnew module via importlib.reload and
retries once. Returns None when recovery is impossible so callers
surface real failure rather than fake success.
Wire the helpers in:
* handle_command's open_project / create_project path validates the
loaded board and either recovers (with a warnings[] entry) or
returns success=False with an explicit "restart the MCP server"
errorDetails — never claims success when the board is unusable.
* _auto_save_board now detects dehydration introduced by SaveBoard
itself and reloads from disk so the next command sees a usable
proxy. This is the post-delete_trace failure mode users hit.
* _handle_place_component, _handle_sync_schematic_to_board,
_handle_import_svg_logo and _handle_refill_zones all go through
_safe_load_board instead of bare LoadBoard, surfacing real errors
consistently.
Also fix two adjacent issues observed in the same incident:
* _handle_check_kicad_ui used to call manager.is_running() and
manager.get_process_info() separately, with different detection
methods. They could disagree, producing the confusing
running=True, processes=[] state users hit after manually
quitting KiCAD. processes is now the single source of truth and
running is derived from len().
* run_drc accepts a timeoutSec param (default 600s, clamped to
[10, 1800]) so callers with smaller MCP transport budgets can
bound the kicad-cli subprocess. Same timeout is applied to the
optional report-generation subprocess. Error message names the
actual timeout that fired.
Tests: tests/test_swig_dehydration.py adds 17 unit tests covering
detection, recovery, the open_project surfacing path, the auto-save
post-recovery path, the check_kicad_ui consistency, and the run_drc
timeout clamping. Full suite: same 12 pre-existing failures both
before and after this change, +17 new tests passing.
Note: the SWIG dehydration is fundamentally a pcbnew memory bug
exposed by repeated LoadBoard calls in a single Python process;
this PR is a defensive recovery layer, not a fix to the underlying
binding. Complementary to PR #151 (auto-save-guard), which expands
the LoadBoard call rate by refusing saves on external file change
and forcing re-open_project cycles.
Mechanical application of the `.gitattributes` rules from the prior commit.
All 50 files differ only in line endings — verified by
`git diff --cached --ignore-all-space` being empty.
Before: main had 42 CRLF + 27 LF Python files plus mixed-ending in YAML,
templates, and shell scripts. After: every text file is LF (except the
Windows-native *.ps1, *.bat scripts which remain CRLF per gitattributes).
This eliminates the noisy-diff failure mode seen in PR #102, where a
small logic change produced a 918-line diff due to whole-file CRLF→LF
conversion.
Add isort configuration (profile=black, line_length=100) to pyproject.toml,
add isort pre-commit hook, and auto-sort imports across all Python source files.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Add [tool.black] config to pyproject.toml and Black hook to
.pre-commit-config.yaml (rev 26.3.1), then auto-format all Python
source and test files with line-length=100, target-version=py310.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
kicad-cli DRC JSON output stores coordinates in items[].pos.x/y,
not at the violation top level. The code was reading violation.x/y
which don't exist, falling back to (0, 0) for every violation.
Now correctly reads the position from the first item in each
violation entry.
Phase 2 medium-priority fixes addressing three issues:
Issue #33 - DRC violations API broken in KiCAD 9.0:
- Reimplemented get_drc_violations() to use run_drc() internally
- run_drc uses kicad-cli which is stable across KiCAD versions
- Maintains backward compatibility while fixing GetDRCMarkers() issue
- Added documentation to KNOWN_ISSUES.md
- Returns violations in original format by parsing kicad-cli JSON output
Issue #34 - JLCPCB API documentation misleading:
- Restructured README and JLCPCB_USAGE_GUIDE.md
- Now leads with JLCSearch public API (no authentication required)
- Moved official JLCPCB API to "Advanced" section with clear requirements
- Clarified that official API requires enterprise account + order history
- Makes it easier for new users to get started
Issue #43 - JLCPCB part count documentation inaccurate:
- Updated all "100k+" references to "2.5M+" (accurate catalog size)
- Updated download time estimates to 40-60 minutes
- Updated expected database size to 1-2 GB
- Clarified 100-part pagination limit in JLCSearch API
Documentation changes:
- README.md: Updated JLCPCB integration section
- docs/JLCPCB_USAGE_GUIDE.md: Complete restructure with 3 approaches
- docs/KNOWN_ISSUES.md: Added DRC fix documentation
All changes improve user experience and documentation accuracy.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
