Using the Xilinx ISE WebPack Under CentOS 6 in a Docker Container

Description

These are the necessary files for using the FPGA integrated development environment Xilinx (IDE) ISE Webpack 14.7 virtually unter CentOS 6 inside a Docker container. Our motivation for this is that the Xilinx ISE Webpack has very specific requirements with respect to the version of the operating system used. If they are not met, parts of the software will crash.

The basic idea of the approach used here is to not install the IDE in the Docker container. Instead, it is expected to have been installed on the host under /opt/Xilinx/. This directory will then be handed into the Docker container at run-time. This approach eases the installation process a little. And, in particular, the Docker container becomes much more light-weight. A prerequisite is, of course, that the IDE runs at least so far that it can be installed, including the license manager.

This version here has been tested under Lubuntu 1804 LTS and Lubuntu 1604 LTS. But it should run under other Ubuntu variants, too. Probably, every Debian-based system should do.

Known limitation: the FPGA editor always starts with about 70 seconds delay. At the same time, stdout shows an error message concerning a RPC access problem.

Download

• docker-for-external-xilinx-1_2.tgz

(Please note: the comments in the Dockerfiles are in German, because of my students.)

Prerequisites

The packet docker.io must be installed. The current user must be member of the Unix group docker, in order to access the Docker socket. The packets xfonts-75dpi and xfonts-100dpi must be installed on the host for the FPGA editor to work.

The current user must have write access to the Linux device of the FPGA board. If there is an error message at start-up with this respect, you will have to install the udev file 88-jb-digilent.rules (from the tarball). It takes care that the device will belong to the current user after creation. See the contents of this file.

Creating the Docker Image

Create the Docker image by issuing make. The Makefile contains all the commands necessary.

Running It

Run the IDE with ./bin/xilinx-docker (from the tarball).

Similar Work

After I finished the above, I found similar work: https://github.com/zberkes/XilinxISE-Docker. However, I did not try it.