Xilinx ISE Makefile

Tired of clicking around in Xilinx ISE? Run your builds from the command line!

Requirements

Xilinx ISE, ideally 14.7 (the final version)
GNU (or compatible?) Make

Install this through Cygwin on Windows.

Creating a project

To start building a project, you will need to create a file project.cfg in
the top level of your project. This file is a text file sourced by Make, so
it consists of KEY = value pairs. It must define at least the following keys:

PROJECT

The name of the project, used as a name for certain intermediate files, and
as the default name for the top-level module and constraints file.
TARGET_PART

The full part-speed-package identifier for the Xilinx part to be targeted,
e.g. xc6slx9-2-tqg144.
XILINX

The path to the appropriate binaries directory of the target Xilinx ISE
install, e.g.
/cygdrive/c/Xilinx/14.7/ISE_DS/ISE
or
/opt/Xilinx/14.7/ISE_DS/ISE
for typical installs.
VSOURCE and/or VHDSOURCE

The space-separated names of all Verilog and/or VHDL source files to be
used in the project.

You can define these on multiple lines using +=, e.g.
```
VSOURCE += foo.v
VSOURCE += bar.v
```

A simple project.cfg may thus resemble:

PROJECT = example
TARGET_PART = xc6slx9-2-cpg196
XILINX = /cygdrive/c/Xilinx/14.7/ISE_DS/ISE/bin/nt64
VSOURCE = example.v

A number of other keys can be set in the project configuration, including:

XILINX_PLATFORM

The Xilinx name for the platform to build for, e.g. nt64 or lin.
nt64 is used by default for Windows systems, and lin64 for Linux
systems, so you only need to set this if you explicitly need to use the
32-bit version of the tools for some reason.
TOPLEVEL

The name of the top-level module to be used in the project.
(Defaults to $PROJECT.)
CONSTRAINTS

The name of the constraints file (.ucf) to be used for the project.
(Defaults to $PROJECT.ucf.)
COMMON_OPTS

Extra command-line options to be passed to all ISE executables. Defaults to
-intstyle xflow.
XST_OPTS, NGDBUILD_OPTS, MAP_OPTS, PAR_OPTS, BITGEN_OPTS,
TRACE_OPTS, FUSE_OPTS

Extra command-line options to be passed to the corresponding ISE tools. All
default to empty.

Note that XST_OPTS will not appear on the command line during
compilation, as the XST options are embedded in a script file.

MAP_OPTS and PAR_OPTS can be set to -mt 2 to use multithreading,
which may speed up compilation of large designs.

BITGEN_OPTS can be set to -g Compress to apply bitstream compression.
PROGRAMMER

The name of the programmer to be used for make prog. Currently supported
values are:
- impact
  
  Uses Xilinx iMPACT for programming, using a batch file named
  impact.cmd by default. The iMPACT command line may be overridden by
  setting IMPACT_OPTS.
  
  A typical batch file may resemble:
```
setMode -bscan
setCable -p auto
addDevice -p 1 -file build/projectname.bit
program -p 1
quit
```
- digilent
  
  Uses the Digilent JTAG utility for programming, which must be installed
  separately. The name of the board must be set as DJTG_DEVICE; the
  path to the djtgcfg executable can be set as DJTG_EXE, and the index
  of the device can be set as DJTG_INDEX.
- xc3sprog
  
  Uses the xc3sprog utility for programming, which must also be installed
  separately. The cable name must be set as XC3SPROG_CABLE; additional
  options can be set as XC3SPROG_OPTS.

Targets

The Xilinx ISE Makefile implements the following targets:

make default (or just make)

Builds the bitstream.
make clean

Removes the build directory.
make prog

Writes the bitstream to a target device. Requires some additional
configuration; see below for details.

Running unit tests

is a work in progress.

Unimplemented features

The following features are not currently implemented. (Pull requests are
encouraged!)

Generation of SPI or other unusual programming files
CPLD synthesis
Synthesis tools other than XST
Display and/or handling of warnings and errors from build/_xmsgs
Anything else (open an issue?)

License

To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have dedicated all copyright
and related and neighboring rights to this software to the public domain
worldwide. This software is distributed without any warranty.

See LICENSE.md for details.