lowRISC / lowRISC/dvsim

Give a better error message on a silly --tool value

Open
#233 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
13
Forks
21
Avg merge
1d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

This was originally [reported in OpenTitan](https://github.com/lowRISC/opentitan/issues/4689) in 2020.

The basic problem is that dvsim tries too hard to load tool-specific files. For example:

Image

I think it's kind of nice that dvsim doesn't care what tools you have installed, but surely we can spit out a more helpful error message. That file is getting loaded because OpenTitan has this in `common_sim_cfg.hjson`:
```
import_cfgs: ["{proj_root}/hw/data/common_project_cfg.hjson",
"{dv_root}/tools/dvsim/common_modes.hjson",
"{dv_root}/tools/dvsim/fusesoc.hjson",
"{dv_root}/tools/dvsim/bazel.hjson",
"{dv_root}/tools/dvsim/{tool}.hjson"]
```

I wonder whether we should add a magic "test_files" key or similar that would allow the tool die with a message saying "The file path/to/foobar.hjson does not exist. The path was computed from the following wildcards: is one of them wrong?"

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing how the --tool value expands import_cfgs entries such as common_project_cfg.hjson and {tool}.hjson. The work is done when a missing tool-specific file produces a helpful error that identifies the missing path and the wildcard values or otherwise clearly explains the invalid --tool value.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
build-system, cli, tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.