Tcl command to run "Tools/Generate Simulator Setup Script for IP..."?

[zener]

Is there a quartus_sh Tcl command or script to do the equivalent of selecting "Tools/Generate Simulator Setup Script for IP..." in the Quartus GUI?

The scripts which are generated by qsys-generate (Platform Designer) and ip-make-simscript are suitable to run regressions on the individual IP's but not for a project which contains multiple IPs.

The optimal would be a file similar to the SPD files which describes which simulator options (like suppress) and Quartus libraries has to be included in order to simulate all the contained IPs or a list of IPs.

If not is there an example of a the XML content of the ip-make-simscript --batch-spds argument?

[zener]

For the --batch-spd argument it appears to be only a <root> followed by a sequence of <spd> tags with paths according to the help page.

However, the optimal would be a method to extract the options for a given simulator and ip set in order to integrate these in an existing simulation script.

[zener]

It appears that the ip-make-simscript output is identical to the "Tools/Generate Simulator Setup Script for IP..." menu entry when passed a set of SPD files in xml format.

This is a bit more helpful than the GUI as it can be run in batch in a continuous integration type of environment where simulations are running concurrently in different directories.

However, it would have been easier to integrate in a current simulation environment if the information in the tcl scripts like suppress options, library names and paths, possible items to add to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc. I would still like to know if such a feature exists?

[EthanLi]

Hi,

Not sure if the link below is what you are looking for.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/683102/23-1/generating-a-combined-simulator-setup-script.html

Thanks,

Ethan

[zener]

Thank you, but that is the ip-make-simscript I mentioned above.

It would be more flexible if the information generated by the script was available in a format which is easy to parse like xml, json, tcl data structures, or similar.

For example if you are using Questa with the recent Visualizer waveform tool and dump files you will have a problem as you have to modify the msim_setup.tcl script since it uses +acc (in the elab_debug alias) and not the new -debug and -access options. But you don't want manual edits in an automated EDA flow.
If however, the information was available in xml or similar you could parse this and feed it into your own script which is using the -debug and -access options.

The old method should of course be kept (it could even use the xml parse method internally) for backwards compatibility with those who are using msim_setup.tcl.

[WZ2]

Hi there,
Your point is valid and highly insightful. I will consolidate your suggestions along with our user feedback and forward them to our internal team for customer-friendliness optimization.
Best regards,
WZ