by Mark Calder and Ian Kuon

In any digital design with VHDL there are numerous entities. It's always nice to be able to make one big package that includes all the components. However, once the entity has been defined in the design file making the package is a bit of a chore. This program takes entities from the files you specify and using the entity definitions makes a large package containing all the specified entities as components. Run the program after you change an entity definition and the package will be updated.

1. Download this file here and save it in your account.
2. Compile the program in Unix with the following command: g++ -o Packer.exe Packer.cpp.
3. The program can now be run by typing ./Packer.exe.
4. As you run the program, specify the output file (eg. your_package.vhd) and any input vhdl files on the command line. Currently the program is case sensitive but a future version will fix this problem. An example of a call from unix might be ./Packer.exe my_package.vhd code_file.vhd. For now your entity has to be typed as 'entity' all lower case. Also, if you have any signals containing the word 'end' (eg. send) the program will not write the files correctly.

The source code can be found here. It was written in C++ but it probably should have used PERL if we knew it.

This program is far from perfect. If you have any other features you would like added e-mail us and we will update it.

Last Updated December 6, 2000