ISE 8.2sp3 clobbering source file timestamps?

Against my better judgment, I tried using 8.2sp3 again tonight by converting and building an older, working 6.3 project.

I created a new build directory, copied in the old .npl and .ucf files, pointed 8.2sp3 at the old .npl project file, said yes to the .npl format translation messages, then did a bitstream build.

When I went back to my external text editor, I was greeted by many warnings that my open source files { stored outside the project directory, not 'local copies' } had been updated outside the editor.

Checking further, the file contents matched my backups, but all of the source file timestamps had suspiciously been changed to the exact same time/date as the creation of the .zip file used by ISE for the old project backup, as though ISE had decided to "touch" all the source files ( see directory listings below ).

Has anyone else seen this behavior ?

Does this only happen during the import of an old .npl file, or does the ISE8.2 project manager decide to clobber the file timestamps of all user sources on other special occasions ?

Brian

.\syn_xst_8v2 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 2,158 evb_ise7_bak.zip

.\cores\xc_uart

01/04/2007 09:57 PM 11,705 kcuart_tx.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 10,376 kcuart_rx.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 8,392 bbfifo_16x8.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 5,120 uart_rx.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 5,192 uart_tx.vhd

.\vhdl 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 3,302 flip.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 17,751 evb.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 3,190 rf.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 14,408 rom_out.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 3,882 rstack.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 12,260 block_ram.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 1,870 pw2_rom.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 3,234 ffb.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 2,610 bitcnt.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 2,779 y1_config.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 14,536 y1_constants.vhd 01/04/2007 09:57 PM 52,444 y1_core.vhd

Reply to
Brian Davis
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Maybe a little off topic (I do not know why ISE "touches" the source files), but in my opinion Xilinx plays tricks on us users in the way source files are referenced in the project file. I do not have any experiance with 6.3, but at least in 8.1, you get the option to display source file paths as absolute or relative. That shure looks fine, but internally all files are referenced with absolute path! So copying a project will result in the copy still refering all the original source files. I like to keep my own versions of entire designs, trying out different code fixes in different projects, but the only way to do this is to open the copy of the project, delete all source file references and add the new ones from scratch. This may be fixed in 8.2, I haven=B4t had that much experiance with that yet, but it shure make moving or copying projects to a new location a hazzle...

In your case, I beleive ISE 6.3 still had an ASCII project file, so making a copy and manually edit the source file references and then open that copy in 8.2 ought to do the trick! Later versions are hampered by the binary format project file, cursed by so many users.

/Lars

Reply to
Lars

relative.

path!

source files.

Yes, those absolute paths are a pain! IIRC, there are similar problems with coregen project paths.

There's a description of the changes made to relative/absolute path behavior for project files in Answer Record 23415.

If I'm reading #23415 correctly:

- 8.2 always stores absolute paths, but if the project directory has changed it first looks for the files in the same relative location to the project file, then checks the complete absolute path second

- 8.1sp03 checks the absolute path first when the project moves

I'd expect that allowing relative paths to be stored in the project file, as in the older versions of ISE, would be far simpler and safer!!!

My 6.3 .npl file used relative paths, and it imported the sources into the project OK when I moved the .npl to a new build directory; but ISE touched all the file timestamps in the process.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Davis

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