quartusposting

content/posts/quartus-16-on-arch-linux.md

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+date = "2021-09-12"
+draft = false
+path = "/blog/quartus-16-on-arch-linux"
+tags = ["fpga", "quartus", "linux", "archlinux"]
+title = "Setting up Quartus 16+18 on Arch Linux"
++++
+
+In this year's crop of classes, I am using some Fun™ software in obsolete
+versions that would work properly if I would just use Windows like a reasonable
+person. That was not an acceptable choice for me, so I got cracking on the
+experience that is trying to get old proprietary software running on Linux.
+
+This procedure was tested working on Quartus 16.1 and 18.1. It is entirely
+unnecessary for Quartus 20.1, for instance.
+
+Let `$QUARTUS_BASE` be the base directory of your Quartus install, for instance
+`/opt/intelFPGA_lite/18.1`.
+
+## Quartus
+
+Quartus 16 and 18 have basically the same process to run on modern Linux. There
+are a few points that need to be addressed to get this working:
+
+For Quartus, I needed to install `libpng12` from the repos. It may use some
+other libraries that may not be installed. You can see what's missing with the
+following:
+
+```
+$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QUARTUS_BASE/quartus/linux64 ldd $QUARTUS_BASE/quartus/linux64/quartus
+```
+
+# ModelSim
+
+ModelSim (v10.5b) has more interesting problems! To begin the fun, it's 32 bit
+software.
+
+It will not run with a modern version of freetype2, and to further complicate
+matters, modern versions of its dependent library, fontconfig, have ABI
+compatibility issues if loaded with a sufficiently obsolescent version of
+freetype2. Thus, we have to provide obsolescent versions of both that are built
+against each other in 32 bit mode.
+
+I have written a script that automatically builds such a pair, [available
+here][boomer script]. Copy the `out` directory it produces to something like
+`/opt/intelFPGA_lite/boomer-fontconfig`, such that
+`/opt/intelFPGA_lite/boomer-fontconfig/lib` corresponds to `out/lib`, and so
+on.
+
+[boomer script]: https://gist.github.com/lf-/3e642f409e99dd7faa8ce353992e53f4
+
+I needed to install the following multilib libraries from the repos:
+`lib32-libx11 lib32-libxrender lib32-libxft lib32-fontconfig lib32-ncurses
+lib32-libxext`.
+
+In addition to the packages from the repos, `lib32-ncurses5-compat-libs` from
+the AUR is required, providing `libncurses.so.5`.
+
+ModelSim requires several hacks to its launcher script, most of which are
+inspired by [this gist][gist] and [this PDF][document] originally. Open
+`$QUARTUS_BASE/modelsim_ase/vco` in a text editor. (If this is not writable,
+consider using `sudoedit`/`sudo -e`!)
+
+On line 13, `mode=${MTI_VCO_MODE:-""}` should be changed to
+`mode=${MTI_VCO_MODE:-"32"}`.
+
+This script then does some extremely dubious Linux version detection that also
+does not work as it tries to pointlessly load binaries from a directory that
+does not exist. On line 210, in the `*` case, change `vco="linux_rh60"` to
+`vco="linux"`.
+
+Finally, at the bottom of the script, just before the `if` statement that
+`exec`s into whatever program (this is line 323 for me), insert this:
+
+```
+export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/intelFPGA_lite/boomer-fontconfig/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
+```
+
+This will force ModelSim to load the obsolete versions of fontconfig and
+freetype2 built earlier rather than the system versions.
+
+## Final steps
+
+Consider creating an environment script such as the following:
+
+
+{% codesample(desc="`env.sh` sample") %}
+```
+base=/opt/intelFPGA_lite/18.1
+export PS1="(quartus) ${PS1:-}"
+export PATH=$PATH:$base/quartus/bin:$base/modelsim_ase/bin
+```
+{% end %}
+
+Then, when you want to use the tools, do `. ./env.sh`. This avoids polluting
+the global `PATH` and makes the tools only available when you need them.
+
+[document]: https://mil.ufl.edu/3701/docs/quartus/linux/ModelSim_linux.pdf
+[gist]: https://gist.github.com/PrieureDeSion/e2c0945cc78006b00d4206846bdb7657