XPS Command Line Commands

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About

• Author: Kevin Hammond
• Last Modified: 07/29/2008
• Notes: This tutorial will instruct you in the ways of the Xilinx Platform studio, via the command line.

Sometimes, running the XPS gui over the network can create ungainly delays in your development time. Fortunately, Xilinx has command line utilities available to make life simpler.

Method 1

From your terminal, make sure to source the proper Xilinx tools.

   $. /opt/Xilinx/9.1i/settings.sh

then type

   xps -nw system.xmp

This will do two things, first, the -nw option means "No Window" which supresses the gui. Second, it tells xps to open the system.xmp project file. If your project file is named differently, obviously use your project filename.

You should now be staring at the

   xps%

prompt. From this prompt, you can run any number of programs to make xps do what you need it to do.

   xps%run clean            - Delete all generated files
   xps%run bits             - Generates the bitstream-system.bit file
   xps%run netlist          - Generates the netlist
   xps%run init_bram        - Generates the download.bit file
   xps%run program          - Generates the executable.elf file
   xps%run programclean     - Deletes the executable.elf file
   xps%run libs             - Generates the Libraries

Method 2

Another method is to simply use the built in Linux "make" command. Simply type:

   make -f system.make <%cmd%>

where cmd is any of the above commands.

NOTE: Adding

   alias ximake="make -f system.make"

to your .bash_rc file to simply type

   $ximake bits

to generate your bitstream-system.bit file will make frequent generations less tedious.