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FreeBSD Instructions

FreeBSD (1)
Brian Drummond Adam Jensen

Building GHDL on FreeBSD-9.2

C-shell Alert!

Some commands in this guide specifically use bourne shell syntax (sh, ksh93, pdksh, bash, zsh, etc.). csh users will need to adjust accordingly.

Convention:

The root prompt is indicated by #
A system user prompt is indicated by $

Warning!

Pay close attention to the prompt! For this procedure to go smoothly, some operations must to be performed by the root user and others should be performed with your regular system user account.

1. Install the gcc-aux Ada/C++ compiler.

The gcc-aux compiler will be used to compile the gcc-4.8.2/ghdl-0.31 source.

# cd /usr/ports/lang/gcc-aux/
# make install clean

Note:

The dialog4ports system will prompt the user several times with configuration options for the compiler and its dependencies. Minimally, ADA and CXX must be selected for gcc-aux.

  • ADA - Build Ada language
  • CXX - Build C++ language

STATIC and NLS were also selected on the test system.

  • STATIC - Build with no shared libraries other than libc
  • NLS - Native language support
2. Install wget.

wget is a computer program that retrieves content from web servers. It will be used to fetch the GHDL source files.

# cd /usr/ports/ftp/wget
# make install clean
2-alt. Development branch alternative. Install mercurial.

mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. The ghdl-updates project uses mercurial to track changes to the ghdl source code.

# cd /usr/ports/devel/mercurial
# make install clean
3. Set up the directory structure for your user account.

For the convenience of scripting and having a common reference, this directory structure is used throughout this guide. 

$ mkdir $HOME/local
$ mkdir -p $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles
$ mkdir -p $HOME/ghdl_build/source

The directory tree just created, if visualized, might look like this:

    $HOME
    ├── local
    └── ghdl_build
        ├── distfiles
        └── source
4. Obtain the GCC-4.8.2 source.

The gcc-4.8.2 source is accessible through the FreeBSD ports systems. These commands will not build or install gcc-4.8.2, we're only fetching the source.

# cd /usr/ports/lang/gcc48
# make fetch checksum extract patch

Note:

The dialog4ports system will prompt the user with a single option for Java platform support.

  • JAVA - Java platform support

This is not needed and can safely be unchecked.

The gcc-4.8.2 source can now be copied into the user's directory where ghdl will be built.

$ cd /usr/ports/lang/gcc48/work/
$ cp -R gcc-4.8-20130808 $HOME/ghdl_build/source/

The ports tree can now be cleaned up a bit.

# cd /usr/ports/lang/gcc48
# make clean
5. Obtain the GHDL source.

Set a shell variable for the GHDL version you would like to install.

C-shell Alert!

The following export command is specifically bourne shell syntax. csh users will need to adjust accordingly.

$ export GHDL_VER="0.31"

Download and unpack the GHDL source.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ghdl-updates/Source/ghdl-${GHDL_VER}.tar.gz
$ mkdir ghdl-${GHDL_VER}
$ tar xzf ghdl-${GHDL_VER}.tar.gz -C ghdl-${GHDL_VER}/

Pack the set of ghdl source files that will be compiled together with gcc-4.8.2 to create the ghdl compiler.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/ghdl-${GHDL_VER}/translate/gcc/
$ ./dist.sh sources
$ mv ghdl-${GHDL_VER}.tar.bz2 $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/

Unpack the bundle into the source tree.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/
$ tar xjf ghdl-${GHDL_VER}.tar.bz2 -C $HOME/ghdl_build/source/

If visualized, the directory tree should now look like this:

    $HOME
    `-- ghdl_build
        |-- distfiles
        |   `-- ghdl_${GHDL_VER}
        `-- source
            |-- gcc-4.8-20130808
            `-- ghdl-${GHDL_VER}

Note:

The distfiles/ghdl_${GHDL_VER} directory and the source/ghdl-${GHDL_VER} are not exactly the same.

5-alt. Development branch alternative. Obtain the GHDL-current source.

The development branch of GHDL can be followed by cloning the repository.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/
$ hg clone http://hg.code.sf.net/p/ghdl-updates/code ghdl-updates-code

Your repository can later be updated like this:

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/ghdl-updates-code/
$ hg pull
$ hg update

Pack the set of ghdl source files that will be compiled together with gcc-4.8.2 to create the ghdl compiler.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/ghdl-updates-code/translate/gcc/
$ ./dist.sh sources

Set a shell variable for the GHDL version you would like to install.

C-shell Alert!

The following export command is specifically bourne shell syntax. csh users will need to adjust accordingly.

$ export GHDL_VER="0.32dev"

Warning!

Following -current means things will be changing. If GHDL does not seem to compile, try an earlier tag.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/ghdl-updates-code/translate/gcc/
$ mv ghdl-${GHDL_VER}.tar.bz2 $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/

Unpack the bundle into the source tree.

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/distfiles/
$ tar xjf ghdl-${GHDL_VER}.tar.bz2 -C $HOME/ghdl_build/source/

If visualized, the directory tree should look like this:

    $HOME
    `-- ghdl_build
        |-- distfiles
        |   `-- ghdl-updates-code
        `-- source
            |-- gcc-4.8-20130808
            `-- ghdl-${GHDL_VER}
6. Modify the GHDL Makefile.in file.

The FreeBSD / gcc-aux environment uses the command ada rather than gnatgcc.

$ sed -i .orig 's/gnatgcc/ada/' $HOME/ghdl_build/source/ghdl-${GHDL_VER}/vhdl/Makefile.in

The GHDL source files can now be copied into the gcc tree.

$ cp -R $HOME/ghdl_build/source/ghdl-${GHDL_VER}/vhdl $HOME/ghdl_build/source/gcc-4.8-20130808/gcc/
7. Create a build script.

Create the shell script $HOME/ghdl_build/build_gcc.sh

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build
$ vi build_gcc.sh

Copy and paste this build_gcc.sh script into your editor.

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#!/bin/sh
BASEDIR=$HOME/ghdl_build
PREFIX=$HOME/local
export CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/sh
SOURCEDIR=$BASEDIR/source/gcc-4.8-20130808
BUILD_DIR=$BASEDIR/build
if [ -d "$BUILD_DIR" ]; then
    cd $BUILD_DIR
    gmake distclean
    gmake clean
else
    mkdir $BUILD_DIR
    cd $BUILD_DIR
fi
$SOURCEDIR/configure --enable-languages=vhdl --enable-libada --enable-checking --prefix=$PREFIX --disable-bootstrap
gmake

Note:

This script will install GHDL into $HOME/local. The value of PREFIX can be set to /usr/local/ghdl if you wish to make GHDL globally available on your system.

8. Build and install GHDL.

Set your $PATH to include the gcc-aux compiler directory and your $HOME/local/bin directory.

C-shell Alert!

The following export command is specifically bourne shell syntax. csh users will need to adjust accordingly.

Note:

It is probably best to modify PATH in your $HOME/.profile file.

$ export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:/usr/local/gcc-aux/bin:$PATH

Compile GHDL.

C-shell Alert!

The following redirection of stderr to stdout to a pipe specifically uses bourne shell syntax. csh users will need to adjust accordingly.

$ chmod u+x $HOME/ghdl_build/build_gcc.sh
$ $HOME/ghdl_build/build_gcc.sh 2>&1 | tee $HOME/ghdl_build/build_gcc-${GHDL_VER}.log

[...a lot of build status notifications...]

If there were no errors (there shouldn't have been), the installation can be completed:

$ cd $HOME/ghdl_build/build/
$ gmake install

Note:

If the value of PREFIX was set to /usr/local (rather than $HOME/local) in the build_gcc.sh script, then gmake install should be executed with root privileges.

Congratulations! You should now have a working GHDL compiler installed on your FreeBSD system.

Related

Wiki: GHDL Developer Page

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