Will newer versions of Vivado work with older ARTIQ releases?

pkamala

Hello all,

I have read the Installing Vivado section of the ARTIQ manual on Building and developing ARTIQ which says:

The “appropriate” Vivado version to use for building gateware and firmware can vary. Some versions contain bugs that lead to hidden or visible failures, others work fine. Refer to the flake.nix file from the ARTIQ repository in order to determine which version is used at M-Labs.

Does this mean that I should use the Vivado version from the flake.nix in the ARTIQ revision that I'm using to build gateware/firmware or the latest version being used at M-Labs?

I'm aware the build process will try to access the older version of Vivado if that's what's in the corresponding flake.nix file, but can I install, say Vivado 2022.2, and create symlinks for older versions like 2021.1 that point to the 2022.2 install location?

Thanks,
Priya

architeuthis

Use the Vivado version from the revision of the ARTIQ flake you're building from. That should be confirmed to build that revision correctly, and is in line with how Nix works for everything else. As the manual says, Vivado is finicky, and other versions are not guaranteed to work properly -- they might, but it's not tested at M-Labs.

pkamala

Thank you.

wpc3

pkamala For the record, in the past I tried to avoid installing another version of Vivado in the way you suggested and wasn't successful.

sb10q

To Xilinx's credit, Vivado does tend to get less buggy over time, so building old ARTIQ with recent Vivado will likely work.