Run Platform Designer from pre_flow_script fails

[SFava1]

Hello,

The Context

I am trying to automatize the whole Quartus design flow so that when starting the Compilation flow I will get:

• automatic generation of the system through Platform Designer
• all compilation steps runs until the output files are generated
• the output files and reports are moved into a dedicated out folder

The Issue

All the steps are in place and properly works, the only issues is how to successfully run the Platform Designer from the PRE_FLOW_SCRIPT tcl script.

What I Have Tried

I added the following line in my *.qsf file:

set_global_assignment -name PRE_FLOW_SCRIPT_FILE "quartus_sh:pre_flow_script.tcl"

Where the pre_flow_script.tcl contains:

exec qsys-generate.exe [glob *.qsys] --synthesis=VERILOG

I verified that this command correctly works by executing the command in a shell.

For some reason when I run the command the way Quartus prime would run it, i.e. as quartus_sh -t pre_flow_script.tcl <flow> <proj name> <revision>, Platform Designer makes its job till the end of the process but quartus_sh always reports an error at the end.

But I do not get the reason, as the tcl script run successfully!

For your reference I attached the log file.

System Info:

• OS: Windows 10 (64bit)
• Quatus Prime Vesion 18.1.0 Build 625 09/12/2018 SJ Lite Edition

Is there anything I can do in the tcl script?

Or is there another way to automatically run the system generation from Quartus without using the TCL script approach?

Regards,

Samuele Favazza

[Kenny_Tan]

Unlike Quartus Pro, Quartus lite should auto generate those qsys files in every compilation. You can look into assignment -> settings -> IP settings -> Always regenerate IP files for IP cores.

What you need to do is include your design with an .qsys files instead of .qip files. You should not need any script to do the work.

[Kenny_Tan]

Any update?

[SFava1]

Hello, thank you for the fast answer, I was out of office for a while.

I noticed that Quartus Lite automatically generate the output files, nevertheless it does not generate all of them.

In particular, according to our workflow, we need the html file generated by Platform Designer, which seems to be created only when the qsys-generate.exe command is executed, either through the GUI or from the shell.

Do you know how to generate it without the user manual intervention?

[Kenny_Tan · Accepted solution]

Looking into the user guide https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/programmable/us/en/pdfs/literature/hb/qts/qsys_intro.pdf page 6 - 23. it seems to be only way to create this html file through the Platform designer. If Quartus failed to generate automatically, we can have an enhancement on this,

[SFava1]

I think it makes sense that all the Platform Designer reports file are automatically generated.

If you can forward this feature request to the development team I would really appreciated it.