Generating an automated do file with Hierarchy for Modelsim

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Its a onetime process and easy too

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Ideally you would be able to treat the problem like C-code, where you can run a tool to find the dependencies, i.e., the ordering. I have not been able to find a tool that does this well.

I've tried Modelsim's makefile generator, but it only creates a makefile *after* you have a project working.

Its a tricky problem with VHDL, since;

1) If your component uses a package, the package needs to be compiled first.

2) If your package uses another package, eg., a utilities or types package, that utilities package has to be compiled first.

3) If you have have a component definition only, with no entity with the same name, and configurations are used to create instances of the component (i.e., you map a component with a different name onto the component definition), then creating a dependency tool would require a VHDL parser.

The package-to-package dependency in (2) makes using a simple naming convention difficult, since utilities_pkg.vhd comes so late in the alphabet :)

The best solution is simply to write a Tcl procedure that puts the source files in order. If you do use a naming convention, eg., _pkg.vhd for packages, you can search for all packages using Tcl glob, and then just pull out the one or two utility packages and compiled them first. For example ...

   #  'control' library packages
    set control_pkg 
    
   #  The 'utilities_pkg' needs to come first in the
   #  compile order since other packages depend on it.
   # 
   #  Index of the utilities package in the list
    set index 
    if {$index == -1} {
        error "Error: the utilities package (utilities_pkg.vhd) is missing!"
    }
   #  Create a new list
    if {$index > 0} {
        set control_pkg ] 
             end] 
        ]
    }

You can put this script in a common area, and set the path to it using the environment variable TCLLIBPATH (which works under both Linux and Windows for Quartus Tcl and Modelsim Tcl).

Cheers,

Dave

Hi DAVE

Thanks for your advice

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then creating a dependency tool would require a VHDL parser.

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In my design there are a few packages that i can manually rearrange them

Mostly my frustration comes out from rearranging almost 200 vhdl files as per hierarchy

As per your advice i need to parse the VHDL (starting from TOP) file for either component definitions or entity work.instancename

Can you help me with parsing files using TCL (if u already modeled as such)

else i will try and revert back if i succeed

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In my design there are a few packages that i can manually rearrange them

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Great. So list them in a text file, or create a Tcl procedure that returns the list of packages. You can then have your Tcl simulation/synthesis script use that file to determine the list of packages.

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Mostly my frustration comes out from rearranging almost 200 vhdl files as per hierarchy

As per your advice i need to parse the VHDL (starting from TOP) file for either component definitions or entity work.instancename

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If you don't care that your build system is coarser than required, i.e., files get rebuilt when they do not need to, then just setup your script so that it;

1) Read the list of packages

2) Read all files in the source area

3) Remove the packages from the list of all files. You now have two lists; packages and source.

4) Create libraries and compile the packages into the libraries, followed by the source.

If anything in the source list changes, just compile that individual source file. If anything in the packages list changes, then compile the package and all source (since that saves having to determine which source really depends on which package).

See how well that works out.

Cheers,

Dave