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Remote #ci is the way to go in #modernhw digital design testing. Let’s see it in practice with some detail.

Remote #ci as the way to go in #modernhw digital design testing. Let’s see it in detail using sourcehut.

Using #git is not the whole picture on #modernhw version control landscape. Git is great when one decides to locally follow changes, take diffs, create branches and so on. When it comes to collaboration with other people or to create a community around a common project, the need for extra tooling arises, and it becomes evident that git alone is not enough. A #gitforge fills this gap.

How to seek, detect, be notified, analyze logs, understand and react to the different possible kind of issues one may encounter in a digital design is a vast topic of research, well beyond the scope of this modest post. But there are a couple of things we may state about here, though: automatizing issue detection is the way to go. Continuous integration (#ci) testing is a practice to adopt in #modernhw as a way to ensure that our design complies with its constraints. Let’s see this in more detail.

Putting new ideas in community, exchanging opinions, replying to someone's else impressions, sharing public experiences, showing feelings about modern way of living, writing down notes on what’s going on from one’s side ... So many interesting and useful content around to share. The question is, how to do so simply and without complications ? How not to expend way too much time messing with tooling ? Is it yet possible to concentrate on what really matters, contents ? Here I summarize the way I’ve found to contribute to this blog, which fits best with my workflow.

Creating something new from scratch implies a certain ratio of unpredictable issues (loosely defined in the scope of this post: new errors, regressions, warnings, ... any unexpected behavior one may encounter). Most important, a digital design developer needs to define somehow what he considers to be a project issue, before even thinking about how to react to it. Luckily, in #modernhw a few usual tools are available to ease the process as a whole. Let’s overview some of them.

We said #git, then. How to use git as efficiently as possible in #modernhw ? We know the answer, using a front end. Right, but then ? Following a set of simple principles and best practices that will make your life simpler. Follow me on this trip.

Guix reveals as a practical means of handling dependencies. However, the amount of information available to start using it may appear as a bit overwhelming for a beginner, letting the feeling of a tool reserved to a reduced community or experts. Far from that. Here you’ll find everything you need to get started with guix, with a light touch on using it for #modernhw.

Everything you need to get started with sourcehut, an original and interesting #gitforge .

Modern digital hardware design in research implies using the right tools. But this is not necessarily always the case.