Gitignore File for Vivado Projects

[Sal Ammoniac]

What do you folks have in your .gitignore file for Vivado projects?

Vivado generates a large number of files when it creates a new project and I don't know which ones I need to keep and which ones get recreated when building a project. I want to keep only the files needed so that when I clone a project from the repository I get everything needed to build it in Vivado but not the cruft.

[rstofer]

I have no idea...

You might try archiving the project (creates a .zip file in the c:/users/<username>/Xilinx by default) and reviewing what was saved.  There is a file 'archive_project_summary.txt' in the .zip that describes the various sections.  For my project, there are many empty directories.  But the tree is saved anyway.

I would have a tendency to just archive the source files (.vhdl and .v) plus the .xdc and the .xpr file.  The problem is, I don't know if this is adequate with Vivado.  What about the IP files, for example?  Assuming I use any.

[aylons]

May I suggest a bigger change that may actually help not only on this, but in other aspects of project management? You could take a look at the hdlmake tool, it is really a relief and much better to manage with git.

[whollender]

Another option to avoid trying to determine which Vivado project files you actually need is to keep all your source files and a TCL script for re-generating the project in source control.

It's a bit of a pain to move to this kind of setup because you have to get familiar with TCL scripting to a small extent, and generating IP is a bit complicated, but it ends up being simpler in the long run.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Turns out Xilinx has an answer to this on their support site:

https://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/61232.html

Beware, though, that the example .gitignore associated with this answer is missing a rule for Systemverilog (.sv) files.

[rstofer]

Turns out Xilinx has an answer to this on their support site:

https://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/61232.html

Beware, though, that the example .gitignore associated with this answer is missing a rule for Systemverilog (.sv) files.

And it seems to include reports and other files that are only relevant in the context of the current build.  Were it mine, I would be excluding a bunch more files.  ISE had the Project->Clean (?) ability and it was quite useful before zipping up an archive.

To their credit, they are trying to archive enough info to retain all aspects of the last build.  This may make sense for huge projects that take a very long time to build.