XicTools Open-Source Release
October 1, 2017
Revised May 29, 2022
Revised June 18, 2024
Whiteley Research is pleased to offer the XicTools programs: Xic
(graphical editor) and WRspice (circuit simulator) as open-source.
The two programs have sold commercially for more than 20 years, having
been updated steadily along the way. However, a lot more development
is required to increase usage, and Stephen Whiteley, the author of most
of this, is ready to try a new approach.
It is expected that these programs will enjoy accelerated development
in an open-source environment, with the contributions of one and all
adding capability. One day they may become widely used and known for
stability and available on-line support through user and developer
groups. With this critical mass, the programs may become a viable
choice for foundry users, particularly those who may lack the
resources to pay for the Big Box tools. This would never be achieved
with a proprietary software model given the limited capabilities of a
tiny company such as Whiteley Research.
The XicTools software is being released under the Apache-2.0 license,
which is actually one of the most "free" licenses available. One is
not restricted in using this software in a commercial environment, or
in commercial products. There is no requirement that you must share
your source code if you use this. The code can be redistributed with
few restrictions. See the LICENSE-2.0.txt file for the wording of the
license. Basically, if you are commercial and this software can add
to your bottom line, go for it, and we might even help you!
However, this software, like virtually all software, has a history.
Much of it originalted from places like the University of California,
Berkeley (e.g., WRspice is a direct descendent of Berleley Spice).
There are bits and pieces that come from other universities. The
university licenses are also very unrestrictive and likely highly
compatible with the Apache-2.0 license (remember that if you paid US
taxes, you almost certainly paid for the software developed at the
university).
At least one accessory (the help viewer) is tainted by the GNU library
license. So, at the time of this initial release, there may be some
question as to whether the full terms of the Apache-2.0 license apply
in some cases. This shall presumably be clarified in the future. All
old headers have been retained, so users can make their own judgement
about the constraints on a given set of files. Incorporating a better
HTML viewer, that understands CSS, should be a priority.
1. Overview - What's Here
The distribution consists of several semi-independent programs and
libraries, rooted in subdirectories. These are described below.
adms
This is a wrapper around the adms tool for creating run-time loadable
device models for WRspice.
fastcap
This is a customized version of the venerable capacitance extraction
program from MIT. It is called from within Xic for capacitance
extraction of layouts, and can be used stand-alone as well.
fasthenry
This is a customized version of the venerable inductance extraction
program from MIT. It is called from within Xic for inductance
extraction of layouts, and can be used stand-alone as well.
KLU
This is simply a wrapper around the SuiteSparse sparse matrix package
written by Timothy A. Davis, available from
http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/davis/suitesparse.html
The provided makefile operates on the SuiteSparse distribution file,
applying needed patches, compiling and linking. The reslt is a
run-time loadble module which provides the sparse matrix capability,
for use with WRspice (or any other application with a suitable interface).
WRspice does not require this plug-in, but will employ it when provided.
Use of the SuiteSparse package generally reduces simulation time.
mozy
The mozy package contains the help system and viewer used by Xic and
WRspice, including an http/ftp file transfer utility, and a screen
capture into image file utility. This code (and only this program
code) is derived from GNU-licensed code. Commercial users may wish to
build the XicTools without the mozy package, which is a top-level
option.
mrouter
The MRouter is derived from the Qrouter maze router by Tim Edwards,
available at http://www.opencircuitdesign.com. It may be used as a
stand-alone tool similar to Qrouter, or run-time loaded into Xic as
a plug-in, in which case its functionality is available within Xic.
This integration is at a very early development stage.
secure (aka xtlserv)
This package provides the license server, client-side code, and
license-generating utilities for the licensing system used with the
commercial version of Xic and WRspice. This, of course, is no longer
used. This package is retained, for now at least, in the chance that
it may be of value to someone.
vl
This is a Verilog simulator, which is integrated with WRspice but can
be used as a stand-alone non-graphical simulator.
wrspice
The WRspice program is a SPICE-derived circuit simulator.
xic
The Xic program is a graphical editor, used for displaying and editing
layouts and schematics. It provides DRC, extraction, and a lot of
other capability.
xt_base
This contains base libraries and configuration scripts for use with
the other packages.
2. Dependencies
wrspice
mozy (optional)
xt_base
KLU
vl
xic
mozy (optional)
xt_base
mrouter
mozy
xt_base
vl
xt_base
adms
fastcap
fasthenry
xt_base
3. Building the XicTools
3.1 Graphics Toolkit
The Xic, WRspice and other graphical programs have historically used
the GTK-2.0 toolkit. This, however, is rather old and obsolete.
After an abortive effort to migrate to GTK-3.0 (which is also obsolete
but less so) it became clear that a major change of direction was
required, and a huge effort was initiated to switch to the Qt toolkit.
This is mostly done, but details are still being fixed and probably a
lot of issues will be uncovered in use.
Status as of April 27, 2024
- The GTK-2.0 remains as the "reference".
- Pre-built packages use the GTK-2.0 toolkit.
- The GTK version should be considered as approaching "end of life".
- Qt releases are equivalent and users are encouraged to try them.
- New features will be developed in the Qt branch, and may not be
ported to the GTK branch.
3.2 Packages vs. Building from Source
Historically, pre-built packages were available for various operating
systems on wrcad.com. However, due to time constraints the packages
have not kept up with operating system or code changes, and only
Windows may have reasonably current packages available.
The plan is to drop packages entirely, and instead users will build
from source. By providing detailed information and possibly
automation scripts, building from source should be easy for most
users. This will provide several advantages for users:
1. The tools can be updated through a simple command, and rebuilt.
2. If the operating system is updated, the tools can be rebuilt if
necessary.
3. Users can track either the "master" branch, which is stable, or
the "devel" branch, which contains the latest code, or both.
4. Users can control aspects of the build, such as file locations,
GTK vs. Qt, etc.
5. We at the factory can focus on improving the programs instead of
churning out and uploading package files.
6. The make system used to build the programs can also generate
package files, so if anyone wants to produce their own, this is
possible.
3.3 Building from Source, Prerequisites
The XicTools can be built on macOS with MacPorts, Windows with MSYS2,
or any reasonably current Linux system.
In general, it will be helpful to have some familiarity with building
open-source software, with makefiles, compilers, and the tools needed
to build and maintain Linux programs. However, this is mostly for
cases when something goes wrong, so the user can diagnose and fix a
problem. Eventually, we hope to make everything "just work" with no
intervention required, but this will take time to evolve.
Your system will need to have the standard software development tools
and utilities. You will also need to have the development versions of
several different libraries installed. As you encounter missing
header files, etc., these should be installed on your system from your
operating system source repositories. It can be a bit of a challenge
to figure out which packages to install, Google is your friend.
Requirements are partially listed below for various operating systems.
3.3.a Installing Needed Packages on Linux
To install system software on Linux, you will need root permission, or
an IT department that can do this for you. If you are already in a
corporate software development environment, then this software will
quite likely be installed already, as it is at Synopsys, for example.
Programs and Utilities:
There may be a meta-package containing the development toolchain,
which should be installed. These programs may be missing and would
require installation.
git, autoconf, flex, bison,
pkg-config (GTK only)
Libraries and Development Packages:
Often, the basic libraries are provided, but a separate "devel"
package contains the include files needed to compile programs with the
libraries. If a build fails with a missing header (.h) file, the game
is to figure out which development package provides it, and install
the package. In other cases, the library may be wholly missing, so
both the library and development packages should be installed.
Install the devel version, which will also install the bare library if
necessary.
libgsl, libjpeg, libtiff, ncurses
gtk2 (GTK only)
Qt5 (For Qt. You can alternatively install the newer Qt6 if available)
The gtk2 and Qt packages will bring in a large number of dependent
packages.
Below are lists of package names that I had to install on some
operating systems. Note that I've mostly specified the Qt5 libraries
here. These may well be already installed, and seemed to be the
standard. You should also be able to build with the newer Qt6
libraries if available. These would have the same form as below but
with "qt5" -> "qt6".
I've indicated the requirements for GTK and Qt below. You can choose
either one or both, depending on the tools version(s) you intend to
build.
Note: It doesn't hurt to attempt to install software that is already
installed with the commands below. If the software is alredy installed.
you will get a message indicating this.
Ubuntu 20
Debian 11
These use the same packages. The "build-essential" provides the
program development toolchain. The package names can be listed after
"apt install", or the command can be invoked on the packages
individually or in smaller groups.
apt install build-essential autoconf automake flex bison gpp git
apt-install libgsl-dev libtiff-dev libjpeg-dev libncurses5-dev
apt-install libgtk2.0-dev (for GTK)
apt-install qt5-qtbase-devel (for Qt)
Fedora 40
In Fedora, the development tools are preinstalled, but you may have
to install g++ to get C++ support. Again, packages can be installed
one at a time or in groups.
dnf install autoconf automake flex bison patch g++ gpp
dnf install gsl-devel rpm-build libjpeg-turbo-devel ncurses-devel
dnf install gtk2-devel (for GTK)
dnf install qt5-qtbase-devel (for Qt)
CentOS 8 Stream/ Rocky 8/ AlmaLinux8/ Red Hat 8
The first line installs the development tools, including for C++.
dnf group install "Development Tools"
dnf install gsl-devel ncurses-devel libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel
dnf install gtk2-devel (for GTK)
dnf install qt5-qtbase-devel (for Qt)
3.3.b Installing MSYS2 and Needed Packages on Windows
This is based on experience installing on a new Windows 11 machine,
June 2024.
Currently the MSYS2/MinGWx64 environment is used to build and run on
Windows. This replaces the "gtk2-bundle" which provided the needed
libraries previously and was distributed with the program packages.
The user will have to install the MSYS2/MinGW64 environment.
Go to msys2.org, download and run the installer, and follow the
instructions, using the defaults. When done you will have a shell
window on screen. The package manager program for MSYS2 is named
"pacman". Basic information on this can be found in the installation
web site. It will be used to add packages to the shell environment to
support building/running XicTools. Type the commands below to install
the needed packages. In the future, you may wish to install extra
goodies, a lot is available.
Add the software development commands for the "MinGW" environment.
MinGW "Minimal GNU for Windows" is a simplified Linux-like environment
called "Posix" provided by Microsoft as part of Windows.
pacman -S base-devel
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain
Add the vim editor, the winpty program needed to run WRspice, and
the mingw64 versions of the gtk2 and/or Qt and gsl libraries.
pacman -S vim
pacman -S winpty
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gsl
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk2 (for GTK)
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-qt6 (for Qt)
Add some other needed utilities:
pacman -S git
pacman -S autoconf-wrapper
That is all of the packages that need to be installed currently. You
should now close the shell window.
In the future, to upgrade the packeges to the lastest, give the command
pacman -Syu
This should be done every so often to keep current. When this is done,
the XicTools programs should be rebuilt, as will be described below.
To continue with the configuration and build, you should open a new
shell window specificly for the MinGW64 environment. In the Start
menu, scroll down to th MSYS2 entry and open the sub-menu. There are
five alternative environments available. Select the one with the
MinGW64 lable. You should ALWAYS choose only this option for working
with XicTools programs, the others will probably NOT WORK! Making the
selection will bring up a new shell window, similar to what you had
before, but the prompt will include "MinGW64".
You will always use a window like this to build and run XicTools
programs. It is similar to a Linux shell, and provides many of the
same commands. You can add more of your favorite Linux commands with
the pacman tool.
We can now continue the first time only configuration.
1. Type the following command.
mkdir -p /c/usr/local/xictools
2. Use the vim editor to edit the .bash_profile file that exists in
the current (and home) directory adding the following lines to the
bottom of the file. Of course, replace <your_username> with the
correct text. This is the name of the current directory, or the
name printed when you give the "whoami" command.
mount c:/usr/local/xictools /usr/local/xictools
export PATH="/usr/local/xictools/bin:$PATH"
export XT_HOMEDIR=c:/msys64/home/<your_username>
3. You will need to set "Developer Mode". Developer mode is required
to create symbolic links, used in the install.
a. From Settings (grear-shaped icon in the Start menu) select System
b. Scroll down to "For Developers" and select.
c. Turn on "Developer Mode", answer prompt.
4. Finally, if you intend to create packages, you will need the
inno-setup packager (http://www.jrsoftware.org/).
The Makefiles assume release 5.5.9. You might wish to get this
(or a newer release) if you intend to produce packages for Windows.
The XicTools Makefile assumes that this is installed at c:/inno-5.5.9
which is mounted on /inno-5.5.9 in MSYS2.
You will run the pacman installer in the future to update your
packages, and to add any packages needed later.
3.3.c Installing MacPorts and Needed Packages on macOS.
1. Install xcode
This is Apple's development package, available as a download from the
App store.
2. Install the "command line tools"
Install this by giving the following command in a terminal window:
xcode-select --install
3. Run xcode to sign off on the license agreement.
Give the following command and agree to the terms:
xcodebuild -license
4. To run the GTK versions of the programs you will need an X11
server. The recommended server is XQuartz (www.xquartz.org).
This is the "official" X server for the Mac, however others are
available, including one through macports. Follow the
instructions to install and start the server.
If you will build and run the Qt versions only, you do not need
XQuartz.
5. Download the MacPorts installer from macports.org. This will
provide the graphical libraries used by the programs. Following
the instructions, install MacPorts for your operating system. Be
sure to install the default package which installs in the default
location (i.e., don't build from source and change the location).
Once the basic installation is done, run, the following commands:
sudo port -v selfupdate
sudo port install autoconf
sudo port install python27
sudo port install python2_select
sudo port install gsl
sudo port install gtk2 (for GTK)
sudo port install pkgconfig (for GTK)
sudo port install qt6 (for Qt)
6. Set your shell search path to include /usr/local/xictools/bin.
In the future you will want to update the ports every so often to keep
current. This can be done with the commands
sudo port -v selfupdate
sudo port upgrade outdated
After doing this you will need to rebuild and reinstall the XicTools
programs as will be described below.
The Qt versions of the tools are "native" masOS applications. Other
than not needing an X-server, the main difference is that the
application main menus appear in the Mac location at the top of the
screen, and not in the application window.
3.4 Obtaining the Git Repository
The file you are presently reading (README) is at the top level of the
XicTools source tree. It may or may not be part of a git repository
depending on how the files were obtained. You really want to have a
git repository, and not just a collection of files from a zip or tar
file. The "git" program is a software management tool, and using a
git repository allows you to update the files from the primary
repository on github.com with a simple command.
If there is a subdirectory named ".git" in the directory containing
this file, then you probably have a git repository. If not, lets
start over. Go to the parent directory containing this one, and use
"rm -rf" to delete this directory and everything under it (which will
include this file unless you save a copy some place).
Here is the starting point to create a new xictools git repository.
Make sure that you have the git program installed (the command "which
git" should provide a path to the git program). It needs to be installed
if not. From terminal (shell) window give the following command to
clone the xictools repository into the current directory:
git clone https://github.com/wrcad/xictools.git
You should have a subdirectory named "xictools" which contains this
README file, and a whole lot more. This contains all of the source
code for XicTools, and a "hidden" compressed git database. You will
build the tooks in this area. The top directory (xictools) can be
moved or renamed if desired. For example, you may want to create two
such directory trees, "xictools" and "xictools.gtk" to separately
build Qt and GTK versions of the tools.
3.5 The Build Procedure.
First, change to the top directory of the cloned repository created as
above.
This section assumes that you are in the directory containing this
README file in your xictools git repository. It assumes that you have
installed the software build tools and development libraries as listed
above, or a best guess depending on your system.
The procedure is as follows.
The first time, you will need to set up the main Makefile.
1. Copy Makefile.sample into "Makefile", edit Makefile to set the
configuration flags, as described by the comments in the Makefile.
Crucial for Windows: Make sure you add a drive letter to the
PREFIX path, and uncomment the MINGW define.
2. Give the command "make config" to configure the source tree to
your build environment. You may see errors and early termination
if there are missing utilities or libraries. This should take
maybe 5 minutes.
3. Give "make all" to build all of the programs. If everything went
correctly for Xic and WRspice, there should be files present:
xic/bin/xic and wrspice/bin/wrspice
4. in the future, after changes, do "make reconfig" followed by
"make all" to rebuild the programs. Alternatively, if you
want to start over from a fresh environment, give
"make distclean", then "make config" and "make all".
5. Make sure that your shell search path includes the main XicTools
bin, which is by default /usr/local/xictools/bin. Use the actual
path if you changed PREFIX or TOOLROOT in the Makefile.
3.6 The Installation Procedure.
The present default installation procedure assumes that the intended
installation procedure is to first build a binary package (e.g., RPM)
for each program, then install the packages on your system using the
wr_install script. The wr_install script is available in the source
tree under xictools/xt_base/packages/util/wr_install. The Makefiles
will actually prevent running "make install" to the default location
(typically under /usr/local). However, you can modify the top-level
Makefile (in this directory) to allow this (see the ITOPOK variable),
and skip the packaging step entirely if you wish.
If you are building/installing packages:
1. "make packages" will create all of the package files.
Packages are left in xictools/xt_base/packages/pkgfiles. It may
take half an hour or so, since this builds the example Verilog-A
models for WRspice which takes a while.
2. cd to xt_base/packages/pkgfiles, then give
"../util/wr_install all". This will install the programs from
the package files. If you are installing to a system location
such as the default under /usr/local, you need to have sudo
privileges. The wr_install script will ask for your password.
It doesn't matter if this fails if you are installing to a
location where you have write permission.
Otherwise:
1,2. If you are installing to a system location like the default
under /usr/local, you must get root privileges somehow. On
Current Linux systems this means that you will probably use the
sudo command and your account will be listed in the
/etc/sudoers file. If at work, you may have to get help from
IT. However you can install to a directory where you have
write permission without becoming root. Next, give "make
install". It may take half an hour or so, since this builds
the example Verilog-A models for WRspice which takes a while.
You should now be able to use the programs. Have fun!
4.0 Maintaining the Installation Using Git
There are two "branches" in the git repository: "master" (the
default) and "devel". The "master" branch is intended to provide
stable releases of the tools for effective use, and most users should
choose this. The devel branch represents the latest development code.
You should track this if you are helping develop the programs, or just
want the latest. However, programs may not build and other transient
problems may be encountered.
To check out the devel branch, give the command
git checkout devel
To revert to the master branch
git checkout master
To see which branch you're on
git branch
To update the current branch code to the latest from the github
repository:
git pull
You should do this every so often to update your source code so as
to not get too out of date.
On Windows and macOS, you should periodically upgrade the packages you
have installed to support XicTools. For Windows the command is
pacman -Syu
For macOS the commands are
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port upgrade outdated
After updating, or changing the branch, you will need to recompile
and reinstall the programs. This means repeating the procedure described
above:
make reconfig
make all
follow the installation procedure you have chosen
If your operating system is updated, you may also want to rebuild the
programs, however this is only required if a program no longer works.
This can happen if a system library is updated, and no backwards
compatibility library is provided. In this case, run the same
commands as above to rebuild/reinstall the tools.
End of document.