cleaning project of unused files

[Altera_Forum]

Q7.2sp1 

 Is there an automated way to identify and/or remove unused design files (dead files) from a project?  It seems that if you use the symbol tool or megawizard to place an instance in your project, the files do not get deleted when you delete the symbol. Also, if you work on two or more projects at the same time, new design files may end up under the wrong project.

[Altera_Forum]

Hello, 

 the problem with identification of used design files is, that a design file could be used although it isn't included in the *.qsf file. When the HDL compiler find an entity not defined in project files, it tries to open a file with the entities name and processes it normally, only creating a warning. The Quartus archiver also supports this implicite import by simply including all design files found in the design root directory.  Regards,  Frank

[Altera_Forum]

OK, so if there isn't a direct way to identify unused design files, is there a way to produce a listing of the full path/file name of each design files used during a project build?

[Altera_Forum]

Hello, 

 the only way I found yet is to extract the information from the processing report window. Here are among others lines like this:  Info: Found 2 design units, including 2 entities, in source file <xx>  The information is also given e. g. for imported Megafucntion source files. Processing seems no to be saved to a *.rpt file, but can be saved manually in report window context menu. Filenames can be extracted with a Tcl or other script program.  Regards,  Frank

[Altera_Forum]

Search on "Analysis & Synthesis Source Files Read" in the .map.rpt file. This gives the name of the file and the absolute path. Also, the processing messages are saved, but within each report. For example, the messages produced during synthesis are at the end of the .map.rpt, the messages produced during fit are at the end of the .fit.rpt, etc.

[Altera_Forum]

Thank you for the clarification. I thought to have examined the *.map.rpt but apparently I missed the said report sections. I think, that the pereceeding "Analysis & Synthesis Source Files Read" listing design file type and absolute path is best fitted to identify unused files. 

 Regards,  Frank

[Altera_Forum]

So, any tool to remove dead files? Only oldschool- find it, write it on paper and delete manualy?

[Altera_Forum]

What's a dead file? Just because a file isn't used in the project does not mean I want it deleted. (As a simple case, I may have two versions of a design.) 

 Two things that might help: 1) After compiling, archive the project and unarchive it in a new folder. The Quartus archiver tries to take only files that were used in the compile(I believe it takes everything in the main directory, so if you don't have a file structure, that could be a problem. I recommend against that in general) 2) Speaking of not putting input files in the main directory, on all new projects I go to Assignments -> Settings -> Compilation and enable output files to be written to a directory called "qout" or "results". This puts all output reports, programming files, etc. into a sub-directory. It's amazing how much this clears the clutter.

[Altera_Forum]

I tested "archyve" and "extract" version- all unused files are still here. 

Unused files are leftovers of various wizard generated megafunctions. Or something I wrote by hand and included in project. Then, after some time, these functions are removed from main project and they don't do anything. I can remove them from "project navigator", but they are still in project folder. It is simple "trash". I can delete these file manualy, but sometimes it is hard to remember if it is usable in project. So, maybe there is safe and automagic way to cleanup and purge project from this leftovers.