Patch fpga.FPGAProgram at runtime to detect if the FPGA was actually programmed

[alphan]

We currently don't force reprogramming the FPGA on CW305 if it's already programmed. This is fine except when you have a bitstream and forget about this behavior (like me). This change prints a more accurate message indicating whether the FPGA was actually programmed or not.

[moidx]

LGTM

I do agree, this solution seems fragile. Maybe we should look at pushing a patch to CW to determine if an update is going to take effect, or something else?

[alphan]

Thanks for the quick review @moidx.

I do agree, this solution seems fragile. Maybe we should look at pushing a patch to CW to determine if an update is going to take effect, or something else?

Yes, we should try doing that. I took a quick look at _con in CW305.py and it looks like the code both connects to the FPGA and programs it there so we don't really have a way to check this before programming and after programming the FPGA is already programmed. Since the function doesn't return anything now, we could ask NewAE to consider returning something to indicate if the FPGA was actually programmed or not.

[alphan]

I took another look at CW305.py and noticed that there is get_fpga_buildtime but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work properly now. Created newaetech/chipwhisperer#306 #39 and newaetech/chipwhisperer#307.

[vogelpi]

Thanks @alphan for checking this out (and for triggering the other discussions). This may be a bit fragile but it's definitely suitable until we have the option working that can read the build time of the programmed bitstream.