Check in PATH when running target program

[arunisaac]

When running a target program, spike should look for that program in paths specified by the PATH environment variable as well.

Currently, when I run spike pk with both spike and pk being in PATH, I get the following error. When I run the same command with the absolute path to pk, it works fine.

$ spike pk ...
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
  what():  could not open pk (did you misspell it? If VCS, did you forget +permissive/+permissive-off?)

Thanks!

[aswaterman]

I don't think this is a good idea. Your PATH should contain binaries you're interested in executing on your host machine, but pk is a binary you should only ever use in conjunction with a simulator.

[arunisaac]

My question is in the context of packaging spike and pk for Guix, a GNU/Linux distribution. Guix installs executables to non-standard paths under /gnu/store such as /gnu/store/sn650n6mzgz4f0sqc9b18d0gp4mls5ld-riscv-pk-1.0.0/bin/pk . To run spike pk, I have to run something like $ spike /gnu/store/sn650n6mzgz4f0sqc9b18d0gp4mls5ld-riscv-pk-1.0.0/bin/pk ... Note that I don't need to specify the absolute path to spike since it is in PATH.

I don't think this is a good idea. Your PATH should contain binaries you're interested in executing on your host machine, but pk is a binary you should only ever use in conjunction with a simulator.

Ok, that's reasonable. But, would a different environment variable, say SPIKE_PATH, SPIKE_CROSS_PATH or similar, be acceptable? Also, is pk meant to be used exclusively with spike, or does it have a larger function elsewhere?

[aswaterman]

That is indeed an awkwardly long path. But perhaps this is a problem better solved by writing a shell script or an alias, rather than modifying Spike.

Also, is pk meant to be used exclusively with spike, or does it have a larger function elsewhere?

Among other things, it works with rocket-chip (https://github.com/chipsalliance/rocket-chip) and various FPGA and ASIC designs.

[arunisaac]

Guix lets you do something like this: $ spike $(guix build riscv-pk)/bin/pk ... One can live with that. I was just hoping we could improve the situation a little bit. But, not to worry too much.