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.