Kicad 7. No footprints after upgrade from Kicad 5

Question

I used to have Kicad 5, then in the middle of the project, I decided to upgrade to Kicad 7.

When I run the footprint assignment tool, I got a message that footprint libraries are missing (unfortunately, I cannot replicate this now).

When I enter a specific library, there are no footprints available:

As you can see, there are no footprints in the Filtered Footprints section.

Have you tried searching for them in the local .pretty file? — Andy aka, Commented Jul 30, 2023 at 11:33
@Andyaka Can you offer a bit more info on the process please? — user1584421, Commented Jul 30, 2023 at 12:27
KiCAD saves locally generated footprints in a library file called xxx.pretty. Maybe you need to work on finding that library. xxx is some arbitrary name that may have been chosen at the time. It's the best I can do to help. — Andy aka, Commented Jul 30, 2023 at 12:46

Seth · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-31 16:41:09Z

There are two things that might need adjusting.

${KISYSMOD} This is the variable you see in your "Library location" at the bottom of your image. This was used for v5 and earlier. If you have your v5 libraries and want to continue using them, you will need to set this variable to point to the location of your v5 footprint libraries. You can set this under "Preferences -> Configure Paths"
The library names changed between versions, so if you don't have your old v5 libraries or you want to use the newer v7 libraries, you will need to update the fp-lib-table file. This can be just deleted (it is located in ~/.config/kicad/7.0/fp-lib-table on linux). Then, when restarting, accept the defaults.

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