litex: Add Fedora installation instructions.

[enjoy-digital]

The installation guide on Linux only provide instructions for Ubuntu and needs to be adapted a little bit on Fedora machines.

Here are just some notes:

• glibc-devel.i686 needs to be installed.
• libevent-dev -> libevent-devel.
• libjson-c-dev ->json-c-devel.
• ./litex_setup.py --gcc=riscv is also installing the ubuntu toolchain and should use the centos one.

[gsomlo]

Why do you think the i686 version of glibc-devel is needed? Seems to work fine on my end with the native x86_64 version. Something about the precompiled riscv toolchain maybe? (in which case we can build and publish a prebuilt x86_64 toolchain, e.g. http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~somlo/BTCP/RISCV-20210921gitb39e361.tar.xz, built from upstream https://github.com/riscv/riscv-gnu-toolchain)

BTW, the linux-on-litex-rocket instructions are fedora-based (see the prerequisites section)...

[enjoy-digital]

Thanks @gsomlo, that's useful to know Linux-on-LiteX-Rocket's build is Fedora-based. I was just taking some notes here from an installation I did on a Fedora machine to avoid forgetting this.... I'll have a closer look for glibc-devel.i686.

[gsomlo]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 07:07:49AM -0800, enjoy-digital wrote:

Thanks @gsomlo, that's useful to know Linux-on-LiteX-Rocket's build is Fedora-based.

Also, I've been using Fedora for many years now as my primary OS, and I'm currently acting as package maintainer for several things in their official repo that may be relevant to LiteX: yosys, trellis, icestorm, nextpnr, and migen -- and keep them fairly up to date w.r.t. their upstream github sources. Not sure nmigen is ready to be a distro package, but if so, and if LiteX has any near-term plans on migrating to it, I can probably make it an official Fedora package as well.

I can (at least) help you test whatever fedora-specific steps you plan to recommend in the LiteX documentation, just LMK how I can help :)

[enjoy-digital]

Thanks @gsomlo, sorry for the late answer. I just redid the installation on a Fedora machine:./litex_setup.py --gcc=riscv will now use the centos6 version on a Fedora machine with: https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex/commit/0503188661d7f6c04fba99b478ed2447cbe5db3c and it seems the only things that would simplify the installation would be an update of verilator in the official repo since seems too old: I have to re-compile it, are you also the package maintainer for verilator?

Just logging the installation steps to update the doc later:

sudo dnf install python3-pip
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/enjoy-digital/litex/master/litex_setup.py
chmod +x litex_setup.py
sudo ./litex_setup.py --install
./litex_setup.py --gcc=riscv
sudo pip3 install meson ninja

sudo dnf install autoconf libevent-devel json-c-devel zlib-devel flex bison gcc-c++
git clone https://github.com/verilator/verilator
cd verilator
autoconf
./configure
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

[gsomlo]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 06:10:22AM -0800, enjoy-digital wrote:

Thanks @gsomlo, sorry for the late answer. I just redid the installation on a Fedora machine: ./litex_setup.py --gcc=riscv will now use the centos6 version on a Fedora machine with: 0503188 and it seems the only things that would simplify the installation would be an update of verilator in the official repo since seems too old: I have to re-compile it, are you also the package maintainer for verilator?

Sadly I am not... :) Verilator in Fedora is currently at 4.108 (from January 2021, apparently). I notice they're up to 4.215 as of right now, on github.

Do you have any specific reason to need a newer version? With that information, we could email the maintainer and suggest/request an update (this could be done officially via Bugzilla, or just an informal email inquiry, depending on the severity of the issue...

Just logging the installation steps to update the doc later:

sudo dnf install python3-pip wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/enjoy-digital/litex/master/litex_setup.py chmod +x litex_setup.py sudo ./litex_setup.py --install ./litex_setup.py --gcc=riscv

sudo pip3 install meson ninja

This should rather be dnf install meson! It will pull in ninja-build as a dependency, and that's worked OK for me in building the picolibc-based bios.

There's a whole "ethos" in Fedora of avoiding "side-loaded" (via e.g., pip) packages in favor of distro-packaged ones whenever possible. It's sometimes a bit annoying when the priority is fast prototyping, but I also value the long-term benefits of keeping things under some semblance of order and control... :)

sudo dnf install autoconf libevent-devel json-c-devel zlib-devel flex bison gcc-c++ git clone https://github.com/verilator/verilator cd verilator autoconf ./configure make -j$(nproc) sudo make install

[enjoy-digital]

For Verilator, I was hitting https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/op24te/when_gccc_with_stdgnu14_and_a_lot_of_warning/ and so there that the issue was fixed with 4.110 so just clone it and recompiled it, so it could indeed be worth updating the official version.

For meson, we are using pip3 version with Ubuntu since the official version is too old and I just tried to keep things similar when possible with Fedora. I'll also test with dnf install meson, thanks.

[gsomlo]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 07:15:10AM -0800, enjoy-digital wrote:

For Verilator, I was hitting https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/op24te/ when_gccc_with_stdgnu14_and_a_lot_of_warning/ and so there that the issue was fixed with 4.110 so just clone it and recompiled it, so it could indeed be worth updating the official version.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2026957

[enjoy-digital]

Thanks @gsomlo!