Vivado Scripts

Introduction

This repository is a fork of Digilent/digilent-vivado-scripts, however, it does not try to maintain compatibility. If you already use the Digilent scripts, then switching to this repository will require a small number of changes.

This is a collection of scripts for maintaining a Xilinx Vivado and SDK projects as a minimal git repository. These scripts have been tested with Vivado 2018.2 and 2019.1 and they may or may not work with newer or older versions of Vivado.

Requirements

• A Xilinx Vivado install
• Python 3.6.3 or newer

Python Script

The provided Python script, git-vivado.py, is provided as a clean front-end to the Tcl scripts which do the heavy lifting. Here is how it can be run:

• With no arguments the configuration that will be used is printed.
• checkin creates the repository to track with git from the XPR path. It can accept the following options:
  • -b is the path to the Vivado binary to use
  • -r is the path to the repository root
  • -w is the path to the SDK workspace
  • -x is the path to the XPR file to use
  • -v is the version number of the Vivado binary
  • -h shows help information for this subcommand Note that sources do not need to be added local to a Vivado project in order to be detected by this script.
• checkout creates the project using the XPR path from the repository. It can accept the following options:
  • -b is the path to the Vivado binary to use
  • -r is the path to the repository root
  • -w is the path to the SDK workspace
  • -x is the path to the XPR file to use
  • -v is the version number of the Vivado binary
  • -h shows help information for this subcommand

Configuration File

Multiple configuration files can be specified, and they are read in a specific order, each one overwriting the last.

On Linux, the order is:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vivado-scripts/vivado-scripts.json
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vivado-scripts.json
• $HOME/.vivado-scripts/vivado-scripts.json
• $HOME/.vivado-scripts.json
• ./vivado-scripts.json

If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined, then $HOME/.config will be used.

On Windows, the order is:

• %APPDATA/vivado-scripts/vivado-scripts/config/vivado-scripts.json
• ./vivado-scripts.json

The configuration file may contain the following:

{
  "project_name": "Project",
  "repo_path": ".",
  "vivado_path": "/opt/Xilinx/Vivado/{vivado_version}/bin/vivado",
  "vivado_version": "2019.1",
  "workspace_path": "{repo_path}/sdk",
  "xpr_path": "proj/{project_name}.xpr"
}

The above is for Linux. On Windows it will look more like:

{
  "project_name": "Project",
  "project_name": "Project",
  "repo_path": ".",
  "vivado_path": "C:/Xilinx/Vivado/{vivado_version}/bin/vivado",
  "vivado_version": "2019.1",
  "workspace_path": "{repo_path}/sdk",
  "xpr_path": "proj/{project_name}.xpr"
}

The configs support interpolation of other parameters using the {...} syntax. Note that nested interpolation is undefined behaviour. Suppose xpr_path interpolates project_name (like the above example), and project_name interpolates vivado_version, this may or may not work depending on the order that the parameters are interpolated. Therefore, nested interpolation should not be relied on.

It is recommended to have at least the vivado_path and vivado_version stored external to the project. For most projects, it is likely that the project local vivado-scripts.json only needs to define project_name, which should be the same as the project name selected in Vivado.

Repository Structure

In order to ensure that any changes to this repository do not break the projects that use them, it is expected that this repository will be used as a submodule of each project repository that is intended to use them.

The project structure is outlined below, relative to the repository root.

• /vivado-scripts contains the scripts described by this document.
• /proj contains a checked-out Vivado project.
• /repo contains local IP, IP submodules, and cached generated sources.
• /sdk contains exported SDK sources.
• /src contains source files for the Vivado Project.
  • /src/bd contains a TCL script used to re-create a block design.
  • /src/constraints contains XDC constraint files.
  • /src/hdl contains Verilog and VHDL source files.
  • /src/ip contains XCI files describing IP to be instantiated in non-IPI
  • /src/sim contains Verilog and VHDL simulation sources projects.
• /.gitignore is a file describing which sources should be version controlled. An example is generated by the checkin process.
• /.gitmodules is a file describing submodules of the repository. Automatically maintained by the "git submodule" command.
• /project_info.tcl is a script generated by first-time checkin used to save and re-apply project settings like board/part values. This can be modified after initial creation to manually configure settings that are not initially supported. Note that this should be deleted and recreated when porting a project from one board to another.
• /README.md is a Markdown file describing the project and the process needed to use the project.

Workflows

Creating a New Project

1. Create a new Vivado project at an arbitrary location on your computer. When exporting to and launching SDK, make sure to use exported locations and workspaces that are not Local to Project.
2. Create a repository on Github for your project. Use the naming convention <board>-<variant_number>-<project name> (for example: Zybo-Z7-20-DMA). Do not have Github create a gitignore file for you. Clone the repository.
3. Add these scripts to the repository as a git submodule using

   git submodule add git@github.com:AdamChristiansen/vivado-scripts.git
   # or if you prefer HTTP over SSH
   git submodule add https://github.com/AdamChristiansen/vivado-scripts.git

4. Add configuration files.
5. Call

   python ./vivado-scripts/git-vivado.py checkin

   This command can be called from anywhere in your filesystem, with relative paths changed as required. This will also create a .gitignore file for the repository.
6. If required, in Xilinx SDK, right click on your application project's src folder and select "Export". Use this to copy all of the sources from <app>/src to <project_repo>/sdk/appsrc.
7. Create a README.md for the repo that specifies what the project is.
8. Add, commit, and push your changes.

Retargeting an Existing Project to use these Scripts

1. Clone (or pull) the Vivado project to be retargeted. Use its existing version control system to generate an XPR. Make sure to run

   git submodule init && git submodule update

   if it uses any submodules.
2. Open the project in Vivado and make any changes necessary (perhaps upgrading IP). When exporting to and launching SDK, make sure to use exported locations and workspaces that are not Local to Project.
3. Clone the project repository again in a different location. Remove all files from this directory.
4. Add these scripts to the repository as a git submodule using

   git submodule add git@github.com:AdamChristiansen/vivado-scripts.git
   # or if you prefer HTTP over SSH
   git submodule add https://github.com/AdamChristiansen/vivado-scripts.git

5. Add configuration files.
6. Call

   python ./vivado-scripts/git-vivado.py checkin -x <path_to_XPR>

   This command can be called from anywhere in your filesystem, with relative paths changed as required. This will also create a .gitignore file for the repository.
7. If required, in Xilinx SDK, right click on your application project's src folder and select "Export". Use this to copy all of the sources from <app>/src to <project_repo>/sdk/appsrc.
8. Create a README.md for the repo that specifies what the project is.
9. Add, commit, and push your changes.

Making Changes to a Project that uses this Submodule

1. Clone (or pull) the Vivado project to be changed. Get these scripts by running

   git submodule init && git submodule update

2. Call

   python ./vivado-scripts/git-vivado.py checkout

   This command can be called from anywhere in your filesystem, with relative paths changed as required. This will also create a .gitignore file for the repository.
3. Add a vivado.json configuration file for the installed Vivado version.
4. Run

   python ./vivado-scripts/git-vivado.py checkout

5. Open the project in Vivado and make any changes necessary (perhaps upgrading IP or fixing a bug). When exporting to and launching SDK, make sure to use exported locations and workspaces that are not Local to Project.
6. Call

   python ./vivado-scripts/git-vivado.py checkin -x <path_to_XPR>

   This command can be called from anywhere in your filesystem, with relative paths changed as required. This will also create a .gitignore file for the repository.
7. If required, in Xilinx SDK, right click on your application project's src folder and select "Export". Use this to copy all of the sources from <app>/src to <project_repo>/sdk/appsrc.
8. Make sure to update the repo's README as required.
9. Add, commit, and push your changes.

Known Issues

• For Checked out repositories, SDK Application and BSP projects must be manually configured in order to add any additional libraries and compiler flags. This process is fairly error-prone.
• There is some danger that modifications to Digilent's board files may break existing projects, it may be worth considering adding the Digilent/vivado-boards repository as a submodule to project repositories.