CopperForge

Companion PCB Release & Manufacturing Tool for KiCad.

What it does

CopperForge sits alongside KiCad and owns the manufacturing-backend workflow: taking a finished PCB, generating fabrication outputs, tagging a release, and tracking every revision you send to a fab.

• Release packaging — one click cuts <project>/outputs/<rev>/<name>_<rev>[_<date>].zip containing gerbers, drill files, and a Markdown RELEASE_NOTES.md (KiCad version, host OS, git commit, description, user changes). Right-click a rev in the Projects tree → Regenerate to overwrite in place.
• Gerber processing — generate via kicad-cli (auto-detected on PATH / Flatpak / Snap), load, inspect. Live stale-file warning when the PCB is modified on disk.
• BOM extraction — parse .kicad_pcb files directly via kiparse (no live IPC to KiCad needed).
• Project database — embedded redb store tracks imported projects, BOM snapshots, and release history. Projects tab shows a tree: project → schematic (with sub-sheets) → pcb → outputs/rev_NN. Double-click loads; right-click opens a modal for edit/delete.
• DRC overlay — basic design-rule-check visualization on loaded gerber layers.
• Shell / Terminal / Logger panels — in-app command shell (help, ver, info, status, env, new-project <name>, OS passthrough via sh <cmd> or !<cmd>), a bash terminal, and a structured event log.

Built with Rust + egui. Uses the egui-citizen framework for panel lifecycle (an evolution of egui-mobius).

Architecture

CopperForgeApp
  +-- Dispatcher          (citizen lifecycle, flip-flop activation)
  +-- SharedServices      (single source of truth for cross-panel state)
  |     +-- project_state: Dynamic<ProjectState>  (reactive driver)
  |     +-- layer_store, display_manager, drc_manager, ...
  |     +-- project_db: redb handle
  |     +-- kicad_cli_method  (cached at startup; no re-probing)
  +-- Persisted citizen panels (Bom, Terminal, Shell, Logger, ...)

Explicit init sequence in new(): LoadConfig → DiscoverKiCad → InitializeDb → wire SharedServices → register citizens. Panics at any stage print a stage-aware diagnostic with actionable hints.

Dependencies

Category	Crates
UI	egui 0.33, eframe 0.33 (glow-only, no accesskit), egui_dock 0.18
Citizen pattern	egui_citizen, egui_mobius_reactive
Gerber handling	gerber_viewer 0.5, gerber_parser 0.4, gerber-types 0.7
BOM parsing	kiparse (Atlantix-EDA/atlantix-eda)
Storage	redb (project database, single file)
Release archives	zip (deflate-only)

KiCad 10 support

CopperForge detects KiCad installed via PATH, Flatpak, or Snap. Discovery runs once at startup; subsequent gerber/drill operations reuse the cached method without re-probing (Flatpak cold-start is ~1–3 s, so this matters). Gerber filename detection supports KiCad 10's --no-protel-ext naming convention (Top Layer.gbr, Bottom Solder.gbr, etc.) alongside traditional KiCad and Protel patterns.

Building

Requires Rust 1.88+.

git clone https://github.com/Atlantix-EDA/CopperForge.git
cd CopperForge
cargo run

Status

Active development. Shipped:

• Release workflow (zip + markdown notes + per-rev DB tracking + regenerate)
• Projects tab rework + Project Edit modal
• Shell / Terminal / Logger panels
• AppLifecycle with explicit init + cached kicad-cli discovery

In flight / planned:

• Vendor packaging (PCBWay, Sierra Proto Express, JLCPCB specifics)
• DRC algorithm enhancements
• Multi-rev diff view (outputs/rev_01 vs rev_02)

License

MIT