Re: gEDA-user: vhdl simulator in gEDA

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

Hi --

> I think the gEDA suite lacks of a good vhdl simulator. Perhaps "ghdl" is 
> almost the mandatory choice: it 's GPL ,well documented and works very 
> good (i use it dayly). It is capable to compile Xilinx unisim and 
> simprim library and then simulate post translate-map-place&route 
> project, and works smoothly with GTKwave.
> 
> is'nt the time to push it in ?
> 
> ghdl.free.fr/

I have already contacted the GHDL developer, and he is willing to have
GHDL included into the gEDA Suite.  

Also, I have been working on getting the next gEDA Suite CD ROM put
together.  This involves incorporating new programs (like Wcalc), and
trying to fix some of the bugs observed in the last CD [1].

Amongst the new packages on the CD will be GHDL.  However, there is a
problem with GHDL:  It is basically an extension (or front end) for
gcc, and it requires that you co-compile it with gcc-4.0.2.  That is,
installing GHDL involves re-compiling gcc, and requires a very
specific version of gcc to boot.

Since building GHDL mucks around with critical system software, I don't
want the Python install wizard to build it.  Here are two ways
forward:

*  I can just put the tarball onto the CD and let the user do a manual
install if he wants.  In this case, the install wizard will do nothing
with GHDL.

*  I can put a pre-compiled binary onto the CD and just copy it over
into the executable directory.  (I'd also copy the source tarball over
to the sources directory so that the installer has the sources under
the terms of the GPL.)

What do people prefer?

Stuart

[1]  The bugs were introduced mainly by the FC and SuSE distributions
who moved some dependencies around, as well as the introduction of
gcc-4.x in FC.  Our software is OK -- it's the distribution packagers
who caused breakage!