The CASPER open-source astronomy instrumentation group is moving away from the Matlab/Simulink hardware design environment and towards a cheaper, friendly, and more stable Python/Verilog based approach.

Python >=2.7 and the MyHDL >= 0.7 package are required for simulation and for running the test-benches. If you have setuptools installed you can simply run the following within the packages root directory:

$ python setup.py install

and it should process the dependencies for you (unless you plan to use co-simulation or run unit tests, if that's the case see the Co-simulation section below).

If you plan to use MyHDL co-simulation you will need Icarus Verilog and the MyHDL VPI file. This requires the MyHDL source code to build. For convenience please use the build_vpi.py script to download and build this file automatically (you will need Icarus installed):

$ python scripts/build_vpi.py # generates myhdl.vpi
$ export MYHDL=/path/to/hdl_devel/myhdl.vpi

Note: the co-simulating test-benches currently require the presence of the MYHDL environment variable to locate the VPI file so please add the last line above to your shell's init script.

The unit tests run on both the Python/MyHDL models and the Verilog primitives via co-simulation, so if you'd like to run them you will need to set up the co-simulation environment (see above). Once you've done that you can run all tests using:

$ python setup.py test # add -q to make this quieter

If you've explicitely installed 'nose' before (e.g. by using easy_install) you should be able to run 'nosetests' from anywhere in the package to recursively run unit tests.

If you'd like to develop primitives or any other block please fork the main repository to your local Github, checkout a working copy, and use the 'develop' command provided by setuptools:

$ python setup.py develop

This points Python to your local copy for use when importing the package and removes the need to constantly 'install' upon making local changes.