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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

Custom component file locations in Qsys

I find that a lot of my IP isn't particularly re-usable; it'll have a very particular interfaces that communicate with some specific external hardware on one board, etc. That's fine; writing a peripheral that hooks to an Avalon bus is pretty easy, and it needed some interface, so there you go.

The problem I'm having is with file management. These files need to go somewhere, and the somewhere that they really want to go is with the project that they're tightly coupled to. Even past the re-use issue, these files can't be common because I need to be able to archive full and complete versions of these designs.

Ideally, I'd have a file layout something like this, based from the root folder of the project:

./src

./src/vhdl Non-Qsys components

./src/cores Mega-wizard generated components

./src/qsys/comp1 Some custom Qsys component

./src/qsys/comp2 Another custom Qsys component

But Qsys seems to keep only one system-wide setting for the IP search path.

I can't be the only person for whom this would be a huge problem. So what's the work-around? How do I convince Qsys to use a project-dependent IP search path?

1 Reply

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    14 years ago

    Managed to find a solution. By creating a .ipx file (which must be in the same folder as the .sopc file) you can provide project local IP. The Quartus Handbook recommends using ip-make-ipx to build an ,ipx file that actually lists the components so that Qsys doesn't have to search them out on a simple .ipx file with a <path> directive. But Qsys already has to search so much IP from the Altera provided stuff that having to scan the local stuff too is a pretty minor additional time hit.