Add nextpnr-ecp5 to ghdl/synth:nextpnr image?

[antonblanchard]

Hi @eine, I'm trying to use Docker images to do a complete GHDL/yosys/nextpnr workflow. A simple example is here https://github.com/antonblanchard/ghdl-yosys-blink

Rght now the ghdl/synth:nextpnr image only looks to have ice40 support. Any thoughts to adding ECP5 to that image? I was hoping nextpnr would have their own Docker images, but I couldn't find them.

[eine]

• Yes, we can add ECP5. I don't know why I didn't include it before. It might have been because I couldn't build it, because I just wanted to test the examples from https://github.com/tgingold/ghdlsynth-beta in my icestick (I don't have an ECP5), or because I didn't want to "fight" with Trellis. Anyway:

  • Do you know how larger are the dependencies for ECP5? This is to decide whether to add it to the same image or to provide ghdl/synth:nextpnr-ecp5. In the latter case, is it worth/possible to build nextpnr with ECP5 support only or should it include support for both families?
  • Do you want to submit a PR? The code to modify is https://github.com/ghdl/docker/blob/master/dockerfiles/cache_pnr#L50-L81 It'd be ok with any working solution; I'd take care of splitting (if necessary) and/or cleaning up.
  • Currently, nextpnr is built without GUI support. However, should you find it useful, we can add a ghdl/synth:nextpnr-gui image that includes it.

• The issue was transferred from ghdl/ghdl to this repo. Maintaining docker images that go beyond GHDL was a license I took without explicitly discussing it with Tristan. Hence, I prefer to keep ghdl/ghdl for issues related to GHDL, to reduce (at least organise) the noise that might unfocus him from his priorities.

• Your example project/makefile looks quite interesting. I'm glad to see that images seem to work with podman too, since it is not being actively tested in the CI workflows. Apart from that, I wonder if you wrote it from scratch (just looking at https://github.com/ghdl/docker/blob/master/README.md), or you used https://github.com/tgingold/ghdlsynth-beta#docker as a reference. I ask it because of ghdl/docker#20 and https://ghdl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/development/Roadmap.html. Hence, it is really helpful for me to know how users find the sparse documentation and how to better add it to the site.

• Regarding nextpnr having their own Docker images... I tried to upstream the images that are complementary to GHDL. After ORConf, I proposed to fit some of them under the umbrella of FOSSI/Librecores. See librecores/docker-images#33. Previously, I had suggested YosysHQ/yosys#1287 and YosysHQ/SymbiYosys#58. Unfortunately, there seems to be either little interest or time.

[antonblanchard]

• Do you know how larger are the dependencies for ECP5? This is to decide whether to add it to the same image or to provide ghdl/synth:nextpnr-ecp5. In the latter case, is it worth/possible to build nextpnr with ECP5 support only or should it include support for both families?

From memory I just needed prjtrellis. I'm not sure if nextpnr has to be built twice.

• Do you want to submit a PR? The code to modify is https://github.com/ghdl/docker/blob/master/dockerfiles/cache_pnr#L50-L81 It'd be ok with any working solution; I'd take care of splitting (if necessary) and/or cleaning up.

Sure, I'll try to submit something today.

• Currently, nextpnr is built without GUI support. However, should you find it useful, we can add a ghdl/synth:nextpnr-gui image that includes it.

I must admit I haven't used the nextpnr gui myself yet.

• The issue was transferred from ghdl/ghdl to this repo. Maintaining docker images that go beyond GHDL was a license I took without explicitly discussing it with Tristan. Hence, I prefer to keep ghdl/ghdl for issues related to GHDL, to reduce (at least organise) the noise that might unfocus him from his priorities.

Makes sense!

• Your example project/makefile looks quite interesting. I'm glad to see that images seem to work with podman too, since it is not being actively tested in the CI workflows. Apart from that, I wonder if you wrote it from scratch (just looking at https://github.com/ghdl/docker/blob/master/README.md), or you used https://github.com/tgingold/ghdlsynth-beta#docker as a reference. I ask it because of #20 and https://ghdl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/development/Roadmap.html. Hence, it is really helpful for me to know how users find the sparse documentation and how to better add it to the site.

I've been using podman with Fedora lately and it has just worked for everything I've needed. I'll add a variable in the Makefile to allow it to use Docker or podman I think.

I didn't see the full example (very nice!), but I'm sure I picked up the basic Docker options from the documentation somewhere.

• Regarding nextpnr having their own Docker images... I tried to upstream the images that are complementary to GHDL. After ORConf, I proposed to fit some of them under the umbrella of FOSSI/Librecores. See librecores/docker-images#33. Previously, I had suggested YosysHQ/yosys#1287 and YosysHQ/SymbiYosys#58. Unfortunately, there seems to be either little interest or time.

I had stumbled on many of your issues when looking for images and it is a bit disappointing none of the projects want to do anything about it.

[eine]

From memory I just needed prjtrellis. I'm not sure if nextpnr has to be built twice.

We'll guess it ;)

Sure, I'll try to submit something today.

Thanks! I assume that, as soon as we start shipping a new image, you can have it tested with ghdl-yosys-blink, isn't it? If that is the case, you can already try ghdl/synth:nextpnr-ecp5. Note that this is a very first image, just to test if we can have a complete validation workflow.

I must admit I haven't used the nextpnr gui myself yet.

Then, we'll leave it as is until someone shows interest on that feature.

I didn't see the full example (very nice!), but I'm sure I picked up the basic Docker options from the documentation somewhere.

I'll move it to the docs when ghdlsynth is out of beta (which might involve reorganising the sources tgingold/ghdlsynth-beta#74). That will hopefully make it easier to find.

[eine]

@antonblanchard, I'm closing this because new images are available.

Nonetheless, what do you think about contributing/upstreaming ghdl-yosys-blink to ghdlsynth-beta? A few days ago I started reorganising available examples. Currently, there are three subfolders, one for each board. However, all three boards contain ICE40 devices. It'd be interesting to have a subfolder for ECP5 boards too. I think that a first step can be to copy ghdl-yosys-blink as subdir examples/ecp5, as is. Then, I would extend the docker section of the readme.

Since some of the examples are duplicated (e.g. blink), in the future I would like to cleanup by merging all ICE40 examples in a single subdir (following the same structure as ghdl-yosys-blink).

At the same time, currently I'm cloning both ghdlsynth-beta and ghdl-yosys-blink in the test step of this repo. Having them merged would make it slightly "easier".