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It's my understanding that there is a "
work" library in Quartus II that the user can add their own "
packages" or components to and use this in VHDL files.
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In VHDL, there is no such thing as a "work" library.
work is just kind of an identifier that refers to the
current library. Do not mix up packages and libraries, btw.. Any library can contain a number of packages, just as it can contain entities and components. A package, OTOH, can contain components and entities as well.
So, to achieve what you asked for, you literally don't need to do anything, since - by definition - everything you specify (entities, components, packages, ...) goes into the
work library anyway.
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I've read a little bit about this in some books, but nothing that gives a good working tutorial for it. Can anyone point me to a short and clear tutorial on how to create a component, entity, or package and install it in the "work" library so I can build up my own work library for future projects? The actual component or package that is being used for the tutorial can be quite simple. In fact, the simpler the better. Once I understand how to create packages and install them in the work library I can take it from there.
Thanks
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If you want to put your design into several different libraries in a single project in Quartus, you have to explicitly assign your source files to a library. You can do that on the "File Properties" Dialog you get on right click of the file in the Project Navigator (this just adds a "-library" statement to the corresponding file assignment in Quartus' .qsf file). From then on from any file that isn't assigned to that library, entity and component declarations within that file can only be referred to with the library name you assigned above instead of
work (as it would be the case otherwise).
Bottom line is that this might not be what you want since the VHDL library concept basically just adds a bit of syntactic sugar to your projects. Quartus *still* wants to see all of your source files - regardless to which library they belong - at synthesis time. There is no way to use 'precompiled' libraries as you might have expected.