Chiplets-KiCad-Plugin

KiCad (pcbnew) plugins for the IHP heterogeneous-integration ecosystem. This repository hosts every current and future KiCad plugin built for chiplet and interposer design on IHP SG13G2, so they share one license, one CI setup and one place to look. Each plugin is self-contained under plugins/<name>/ and is installed independently.

Both plugins are alpha: chiplet_export lists what it does not verify in its README's Status section, and resizer_passive_elements is a proof of concept.

Plugins

Plugin	What it does
plugins/chiplet_export	pcbnew action plugin that drives the HYP -> GDS -> canonical .chiplet pipeline in one click. Produces the canonical .chiplet, the interposer GDS, the driving Hyperlynx .hyp, and optionally a complete-assembly GDS. The same pipeline runs headless as chiplet-export (reference). Consumed by adk-tools as a submodule.
plugins/resizer_passive_elements	pcbnew action plugin that resizes placed passive devices on the board. Today it covers cap_cmim: it regenerates each instance's footprint through the OpenIntM4TM2 cmim_footprint_gen.py from the w/l or Capacitance fields, then swaps it in preserving placement, nets and the technology fields the export flow reads.

Layout

Chiplets-KiCad-Plugin/
├── plugins/
│   ├── chiplet_export/       one self-contained pcbnew plugin (Python package)
│   │   ├── __init__.py       registers the ActionPlugin with pcbnew
│   │   ├── ...               action, dialog, pipeline/, writers/, tests/
│   │   ├── requirements.txt  that plugin's worker venv deps
│   │   └── README.md         that plugin's docs
│   └── resizer_passive_elements/   same shape, one plugin per directory
├── docs/                     pages adk-docs includes; docs/reference/ is generated
├── scripts/                  write_cli_help.py writes docs/reference/
├── .github/workflows/        CI, one matrix entry per plugin
├── pyproject.toml            test configuration for every plugin's suite
├── conftest.py               sibling checkouts for those suites
├── LICENSE                   GPL-3.0-or-later, applies repo-wide
└── README.md                 this file

Each plugin directory is a Python package in its own right: its __init__.py registers the pcbnew action and its modules use relative imports, so the package name is whatever the directory is called (chiplet_export). Nothing at the repository root is a Python package; the root only carries shared metadata.

Installing a plugin

Symlink (recommended for development) or copy the specific plugin directory, not the whole repository, into KiCad's scripting plugins folder. For chiplet_export on Linux with KiCad 9.0:

ln -s /path/to/Chiplets-KiCad-Plugin/plugins/chiplet_export \
      ~/.config/kicad/9.0/scripting/plugins/chiplet_export

Then follow that plugin's own README for its worker venv and dependencies (plugins/chiplet_export/README.md).

Adding a new plugin

1. Create plugins/<new_name>/ with its own __init__.py, an ActionPlugin subclass that registers on import, a README.md, and a tests/ suite. Use relative imports inside the package so it is loadable under <new_name>.
2. If it ships tests, give it a requirements.txt, add its requirements to the root pyproject.toml dependencies and its tests directory to testpaths there, and add <new_name> to the matrix.plugin list in .github/workflows/tests.yml. Every suite runs from the repository root under the one pytest configuration in pyproject.toml.
3. Keep the plugin self-contained: shared code, if it ever appears, is a separate decision, not an implicit dependency between plugin directories.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later for the repository. See LICENSE. Individual plugins may vendor code under compatible licenses and note it in their own README (for example chiplet_export vendors a GPL-2.0-or-later Hyperlynx writer derived from KiCad, redistributed under the "or later" clause).