Open mcclure opened 1 year ago
@mcclure I have always built openfpgaloader
from source. What is probably happening here is that all the packages (verified for Linux and Windows) only include the openfpgaloader
binary and SPI flash bitstreams, and none of its dependencies. This is fine for Linux and MacOS, where there's basically only one package manager you're expected to use to get the remaining dependencies.
However, it's a bit more difficult for Windows, since there's a few package ecosystems (Chocolatey, winget, vcpkg, msys2, etc). I think you're expected to download the dependencies and OFL from the msys2 project, using pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-openFPGALoader
. Use mingw-w64-x86_64-
prefix- it's the best-supported variant IME.
There are a series of files attached to release v0.11.0. Unfortunately, there are no explanations or documentations of what these files are or how to use them (either in the "release" notes, the README.md, or the downloadable documentation¹). I am on a current Windows 10, and trying to use the files attached to the Github release, I encountered a few problems:
There are four files, and no indication of the difference between them.
mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-openFPGALoader-ci-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
mingw-w64-i686-openFPGALoader-ci-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-openFPGALoader-ci-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
mingw-w64-x86_64-openFPGALoader-ci-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
Other than the -i686, it's not clear to me the difference between the remaining three versions or under what circumstances I would pick one over the other.
The files are in zstd format, but you don't say that anywhere. I was able to figure this out pretty quickly with Google but it would have been helpful to say what software is required.
The programs do not seem to run. I downloaded ucrt as I assumed that is the Windows 10 version. Executing from a WSL command prompt or by double-clicking, these EXE files print several error messages saying that dlls such as "libusb-1.0.dll", "libftdi1.dll", and (some DLL with "gcc" and "seh" in the name) are not found.
My "expected behavior" is that if you put up compiled binaries for download, but there are special steps or other prerequisite software that need to be installed to use them (for example, does this software require msys2?²), you should document those. The release notes in the corresponding Github release would be the best place for that, but the README would also be good.
Partial overlap with issue #96.
¹ The documentation tarball contains an "install" page with fairly elaborate installation instructions for Linux and Mac. Unfortunately, the Windows section contains only the following text:
Aside from seemingly being only relevant to xilinx users, this could be clearer (not a complete sentence).
² I tried running the openfpga binary in an msys2-ucrt prompt, and it also just printed the "libusb-1.0.dll not found" error.