New Features & Additions

• First Linux release and installer:

1. Ubuntu (Tested on Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, should work on 10.04 and newer versions).

• Vivado support added. This includes:

1. Multiple Vivado environments can be added.
2. The Xilinx device selection widget queries Vivado in the background when selecting a Vivado specific environment.
3. Scineric projects can now be exported to Vivado Tcl scripts and Vivado projects.
4. Known file types and firmware databases updated to include Vivado specific mimetypes.
5. Vivado build configuration template available which allows you to run Vivado synthesis and implementation in Scineric.
6. The Plunify plugin now allows you to use Vivado as the backend when submitting files to the cloud.

• Lots of updates to the Version Control Status functionality:

1. The listed repositories for a design now allows you to view the status of multiple repositories linked to your design.
2. It is now possible to stop the Status Query task which can take very long for big repositories.
3. Added the ability to tag a repository after a commit.
4. Lots of polishing.
5. Added a bunch of right click actions to the Version Control Status view allowing you to perform actions on the selected items. Including: Ability to open selected item and its path; Ability to mark items as generated; Ability to show log for versioned folders; Ability to get a diff for modified files (previously accessible through a double click); Ability to revert modified files (SVN only at present).

• The version step dialog button now shows a wizard which guides you through the different steps of the process. This wizard now also allows you to commit and tag linked version control repositories in your design. This tagging functionality allows detailed diffs accross multiple repositories at each milestone of your design.
• Extended Jenkins plugin:

1. Added the ability to specify multiple Jenkins IDs for a design. This is usefull when multiple Jenkins jobs are associated with it, for example to build, simulate etc. on the same design.
2. It is now possible to deploy a build configuration to a Jenkins server. This will create a Jenkins job for the configuration with the parameters you specified.
3. Added Jenkis profiles, thus you can now have different Jenkins profiles for different Jenkins servers.
4. Added a new JUnit reporter build step which can generate JUnit reports for the configuration.

•  The design structure editor can now also be opened as a standalone application. It is also possible to view the list of registered file types (mime types) in this editor.
• All build steps now have new advanced properties which allows you to define which steps must be continued with when the step failed. This was previously only available to be set in the Custom Build Step.
• A log file with all messages logged during the execution of a build configuration is now created for all build configurations. The file has the name of the configuration + .log, and is placed in the target folder of the build.
• Added a setting which will result in lower case paths to be used for all working folder paths created for a design. This is now enabled by default.
• Control over running builds improved. You can now browse the target build directory, view the complete build log etc.
• When stopping any task, a new confirmation dialog will ask if you are sure that you want to stop the task.

Changes & Improvements

• Updated Plunify plugin to reflect recent changes to FPGAAccel. Its no longer possible to configure user credentials inside Scineric. Also added a new seeds parameter to the Plunify Compile (Xilinx) build step. This allows you to specify multiple seeds to be evaluated as part of an experiment, for example “1-5” will start 5 builds each with a different seed.
• A few performance inprovements (loading etc.)
• Switching between build configurations will now automatically refresh them.
• Design structures now end with a new extension: .sds.xml
• Improved design version control locking/unlocking reporting. If there are issues, you will be able to access a log containing messages received from the version control backend.
• Improved error messages when the version of a Xilinx ISE environment cannot be determined. It is no longer possible to overwrite the version used for an environment within Scineric.
• When running a build configuration and the target path cannot be removed, you now have the option to use the path as is, to retry or to cancel the build.
• Design folder’s now shows a tooltip with the path of the folder.
• Improved display of version step’s details. The diff section is hidden in when no diff exists, making the detailed description easier to read.
• Changed the way the application handles its AppData environment. On Windows, this environment is no longer initialized by the NSIS installer. From now on all environments (Linux and Windows) will initialize this environment when any of the tools starts the first time. Every time a tool is launched, it will validate this environment path and restore it if it was removed, or if a newer version is installed it will be updated accordingly.
• Tcl “overview” command now gives some Scineric environment details as well.
• It is now possible to open a design saved on Windows without issues on a Linux machine and vica versa. The first design migration from one OS to another will work correctly, but a second migration has not yet been tested.
• It is now possible to enable auto-switching from different firmware repository environments to the local environment.
• Remove the Additional Arguments from the XST build step. Its not applicable since XST gets its parameters through the .xst parameter file.
• Changed the behaviour when showing build configurations from a design’s Builds tab. The new behaviour fixes numerous issues with the previous way of handling it.
• Changed the way build configurations are compared. Previously you had to select two configurations to compare in the list of build configurations, from now on there is a new Compare button which brings up a new comparison dialog.
• Renamed the “Supporting Items” node in the HDL Design design structure to “Other”, matching the node with the same function in the Open Cores design structure.
• The “Match Version Generics” property of the Xilinx XST build step is now false by default.
• The design duplication widget now shows you the path where the design will be copied to.
• The design duplication widget now only shows design file nodes that actually contains files under them.
• When closing the last editor in the editing mode will now switch back to the Designs mode when it makes sense to do so.
• The “design set read_only” Tcl command will now set the design in a forced read only mode where it will save itself in any situation, thus you are guaranteed that the design file will not change, not matter what you do in the design. This is useful when using scitclsh to run design builds on a remote Jenkins server.
• The version control status widget will now apply the ignored and generated item filters only to unversioned items.
• Build configuration logs will now contain any errors/warnings found during refreshing of the configuration.
• Improved display options for design item view:

1. The previous “performance mode” is now called display detail level and is located under a new design display options menu.
2. It is now possible to choose between different options for coloring the names of files in the design items view.

• Design sync’ing now support the ability to do case sensitive sync’ing on Windows.
• Changed the default build target path to not include the version of the design anymore. It is now just %{DESIGN_PATH}/build/%{BUILD_CONFIG_NAME}.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issues with relative paths and custom firmware repository paths when creating Xilinx Tcl scripts.
• Fixed -session_path argument not used correctly in scitclsh.
• Fixed “No recent documents” message not shown in welcome screen when no recent documents exists.
• Fixed evaluation expiry date issues the first time you run the application.
• Fixed spelling mistake in “Latex Generation Outputs” description for mime type “vnd.scineric.latex.generated.text”.
• Fixed bug where opening a design will set all files’ generated item property according to the design structure used. This overwrote custom generated files marked as not generated.
• Removed the “Open Path” action from right click context menu on folders. The “Browse Directory” action is the one to use for folders.
• Fixed issue with names of build configuration tasks.
• Fixed issue with mime-type definitions of Xilinx constraints files.
• Fixed some GUI issues in firmware configuration page.
• Fixed issue where application’s title was not updated correctly in some situations.
• Fixed folder name display issue when right-clicking on a design folder and then going into Properties.
• Fixed issues with the parsing of Git processes. Don’t log things as errors that are not errors.
• Fixes some issues with the running task summary in the top of the application where you sometimes had to scroll right in order to close tasks.
• Fixed regression where the XST build step did not pass the Generics property’s value on properly.
• Fixed issue where the Generics property of the XST build step was not refreshes when the build configuration was refreshed.
• Fixed regression where the Additional Arguments of some build steps were ignored.
• Fixed “Multiple active xcf files exists, the first one will be used” message showing up when it should not in Xilinx ISE Flow build configurations.
• Fixed Diff Tool setup being disabled when you selected “Open files inside”.
• Fixed Diff Tool not launching correctly in some cases.
• Fixed numerous issues with design archiving, including a crash in some specific scenarios.
• Fixed numerous issues with processing of messages received from Xilinx ISE background processes.
• The time next to the name of a running build configuration is now updated continiously.
• Fixed issues when forcing application to close on Windows. It will not close all processes spawned by Scineric as well as the Scineric process itself.
• Fixed issue where manual design merges always reverted back to the default merge configuration.
• Fixed regression introduced in previous version which could cause design merges to use wrong merge configurations.
• Fixed issue where files under the root “Files” node were ignored when opening a design.
• Fixed regression which caused design duplication and manual merge design node selection trees to display incorrectly.
• When stepping the version of a design, an error message will no longer be displayed saying that hash codes could not be calculated for non-existing files.
• Fixed issue where “Process Generated Files” build step failed to append the version number to files when a file with the version appended number already exists.
• Fixed issues with design node lookups in extension databases in some situations.
• Fixed issues with design sync’ing in some scenarios.
• Fixed issues with recent application modes not always populated correctly.
• Fixed some issues where design cleaning did not always respect the target path of the cleaner.
• Fixed issue with saving of files open in text editors where save shortcuts did not always work.
• Fixed issue where the “design set read_only” Tcl command was not implemented.
• Fixed issue where case changes to existing files were not saved when saving a design.
• Fixed issue where renaming a file to its current name removed it from the design.
• Fixed issues where recent designs were not correctly populated when having multiple instances of Scineric open.
• Fixed spelling mistake in Xilinx PAR properties. “Extra Effor Level” is now spelled “Extra Effort Level”.
• Fixed bug where some items in the Version History tab of a design was still editable even when the design was in read only state.
• Fixed issue where potential error messages from SVN operations could be missed, resulting in unexpected results.