Add support for macros to Tincr checkpoints

[ttown523]

Hi Brad,

I was playing around with macros in Vivado (specifically, how you specify the placement of the internal cells of a macro), which lead me to your read_tcp function. I have tried using this function to import a design back into Vivado and the function looks to complete successfully (there are no errors), but I open the GUI and there is just an empty netlist. Attached is a TCL script for the simple design I was testing. Here are the exact commands I used to help recreate the issue.

1. source -notrace test.tcl
2. tincr::write_tcp macro.tcp
3. close_design
4. tincr::read_tcp macro.tcp
5. start_gui

Are you able to reproduce this? And if so, do you know why its happening? Thanks!

NOTE: Vivado is expecting the name of the edif file you import to be the same as the top level cell in the edif. I modified your write_tcp function on my end slightly to guarantee this behavior.

write_edif -force "${filename}/[get_property TOP [get_design]].edf"

test.txt
(I couldn't upload a .tcl script, so the file extension is .txt, sorry)

[bradselw]

The read_tcp and write_tcp functions do not currently support macros. That being said, I think it would be worth investigating whether support could be added. I'm updating this bug to a feature request.

[bradselw]

To clarify, the ask here is to add support for Vivado's macro construct to Tincr's checkpoint functions. This issue will be considered complete when one of the two happens:

1. It is determined that a Vivado macro is not compatible with the Tincr checkpoint (i.e. support cannot be added, or the cost of adding such support is too great)
2. Support for Vivado macros is added to the Tincr checkpoint