Hi
We have developed a cross-vendor firmware design management environment in = our team. It integrates and sync's with many design environments (Sigasi, M= entor Graphics HDL Author etc) and takes care of the full implementation pr= ocesses for multiple back-ends (Xilinx, Altera, Plunify etc.). It operates = on something we call "file association databases". These databases are simp= le XML files containing details about file types used in the firmware world= . The idea is that they can evolve over time through knowledge added to the= m by experts in the field. At present, they cover Xilinx, Altera and Mentor= Graphics tools.=20
The knowledge contained in these databases allows us to perform advanced op= erations on the files in a design. It knows which files are generated etc, = allowing you to for example clean designs. Furthermore it can enforce direc= tory structures and along with this it knows what needs to end up in versio= n controlled repositories and what needs to stay out. This is very powerful= , for example it allows you to do version control consistently across teams= . If you are an IP core provider, it will for example allows you to package= your cores in a consistent way with little effort.
We've been using and tweaking it for about 2 years now so the result is a l= ong list of features that is really useful to a firmware designer and we th= ink that it will be useful to other firmware designers out there. At the mo= ment we are not sure if we are going to open source it, or if we are going = to take a different route.=20
We would like your feedback to help us determine if there is a need for suc= h a tool externally. More information about the project can be found at:
Thanks, Jaco