Subject: Re: [bug#78233] [PATCH 1/2] gnu: Add nextpnr.

From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2025 16:00:55 +0900

Hi

Cayetano Santos <[email-masked]> writes:

>>jeu. 08 mai 2025 at 21:43, Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> Why do we not build the GUI?  We already have the Qt dependencies, it
>> seems.
>
> Simply, I’m  unable to compile 0.8 with the gui flag on.
>
> To me, the priority now is providing in Guix a place and route workflow
> for all available nextpnr backends in cli mode, which is what most
> engineers use. In a second time, we will investigate how to build the
> gui and how activate other interesting options, but I’d rather prefer
> this point not to be a big stopper to what really matters.

Since the current variant of nextpnr-ice40 was building the GUI just
fine, and the error was just adjusting the headers location, I've gone
ahead and done that.  Otherwise it'd have been a regression or feature
removal, which we shouldn't do lightly with an update.

>> Well done!  If the source changes often, a patch could be more
>> maintainable; ideally in way that can be forwarded upstream too, with
>> good chances of being merged.  That's less work for us in the long term.
>
> Generally speaking, I see what you mean. In this very case, I don’t
> understand how to replace current invocations to inputs
> (this-package-input) with a patch; neither I see how upstream might
> consider a patch to Guix only requirements, specially, as there is no
> support to compilations not using the 3rd party modules they provide.

See commit 221899c2023, which introduces two patches [0, 1] to allow using
GoogleTest and ImGui/QtImGui from the system before falling back to the
bundled copies.

[0]  https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr/pull/1478
[1]  https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr/pull/1480

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim