Adding Board files from Repositories
In Xilinx Vivado one of the things you have to do to use a board from a particular manufacturer is that you have to add the board files provided by them. The board files contain the pin mapping and the memory interface generator project which allows you to develop your project by pulling in peripherals from the board menu.
The usual technique is to copy board file folders to the vivado path. However, its then difficult to version control it and every time the board manufacturer updates the board files you have to keep copy pasting the files.
A more elegant solution is to clone each manufacturer board file repository in a separate folder and then to link it into Vivado by adding a small tcl script which will pull all the board files. This enables you to keep your local repository updated with the remote (done separately using git pull) and every time you run Vivado the most recent board files are pulled into Vivado without user intervention.
Digilent provides a similar solution Appendix: Installing the Board Files via the “vivado-boards” Github Repository where they recommend to use a tcl file to link with their local repository folder, however it does not show how to manage more than one board manufacturer.
Procedure
First cd into your .xilinx folder in your home directory (this directory is normally hidden in ubuntu). For my system I used the following commands
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cd ~/.Xilinx/Vivado
Once there create a file named ‘Vivado_init.tcl’. You can use Vim or any preferred text editor of your choice. For my system this file contains the following lines.
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set_param board.repoPaths [list "~/Work/01_git-repos/public/vivado-boards/new/board_files" "~/Work/01_git-repos/public/vivadoBSP"]
You can see i have two different folders listed, one is the board files for Numato and the other is the board file location of Digilent. In addition Digilent provides the constraints files in a separate repository which you may also find useful to clone.
Check
Once done, run Vivado and create a new project and check if the board now appear in the menu.
Cherrio !!