Install verilog tools

First let’s get this out of the way: I use Linux

Technically these tools should be platform-agnostic and work on other OSes like Windows or MacOS.

I use Linux Mint and whenever I start fresh with a new environment I like to install the following packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git tig zsh tmux neovim mc htop build-essential python3 python3-pip yasm p7zip p7zip-full gparted -y

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IceStorm tools

Most of these steps were copied from the project’s page and improved/updated.

First of all install all dependencies:

sudo apt install iverilog gtkwave build-essential clang bison flex libreadline-dev    \
    gawk tcl-dev libffi-dev git mercurial graphviz xdot pkg-config python python3     \
    libftdi-dev qt5-default libqt5opengl5 libqt5opengl5-dev libeigen3-dev python3-dev \
    libboost-all-dev cmake

Install the IceStorm Tools:

git clone https://github.com/cliffordwolf/icestorm.git icestorm
cd icestorm
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Install Arachne-PNR (old place & route tool):

git clone https://github.com/cseed/arachne-pnr.git arachne-pnr
cd arachne-pnr
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Install NextPNR (new place & route tool). If cmake fails with a python version error just delete CMakeCache.txt and try again!

git clone https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr nextpnr
cd nextpnr
cmake -DARCH=ice40 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local .
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Install Yosys (synthesis tool):

git clone https://github.com/cliffordwolf/yosys.git yosys
cd yosys
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

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UDEV Rules

If you want to be able to program your FPGA board as a regular user you need to create a rules file like this: /etc/udev/rules.d/27-lattice-ftdi.rules with the following content:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6010", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev", TAG+="uaccess"

If your system doesn’t have a group named plugdev please create it with groupadd plugdev

Make sure your username is part of plugdev group by issuing the following command as root: usermod -g plugdev $USER

Please note you can skip this step and just use sudo to program your board as root.

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Troubleshooting

If you get an error running yosys-abc about not being able to find libreadline6:

ERROR: ABC: execution of command "/usr/local/bin/yosys-abc -s -f /tmp/yosys-abc-dHxecs/abc.script 2>&1" failed: return code 127.

yosys-abc: error while loading shared libraries: libreadline.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

You probably have a newer version of libreadline. You can create a symlink in /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ to the newer one like this:

sudo ln -s libreadline.so.7.0 libreadline.so.6 

In my case it’s libreadline7. After this invoking yosys-abc works:

UC Berkeley, ABC 1.01 (compiled Mar  9 2020 13:12:07)
abc 01> 

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Video walkthrough

Here is a full length video with the whole procedure on a freshly installed linux mint in a VM (no audio).