1GTKWAVE(1) Simulation Wave Viewer GTKWAVE(1)
2
6 gtkwave - Visualization tool for VCD, LXT, LXT2, VZT, FST, and GHW
7 files
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10 gtkwave [option]... [DUMPFILE] [SAVEFILE] [RCFILE]
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14 Visualization tool for VCD, LXT, LXT2, VZT, FST, and GHW. VCD is an
15 industry standard simulation dump format. LXT, LXT2, VZT, and FST have
16 been designed specifically for use with gtkwave. GHW is the native
17 VHDL format generated by GHDL. Native dumpers exist in Icarus Verilog
18 and the open source version of VeriWell for the LXT formats so conver‐
19 sion with vcd2lxt(1) or vcd2lxt2(1) is not necessary to take direct
20 advantage of LXT with those simulators. AET2 files can also be pro‐
21 cessed provided that libae2rw is available but this is only of interest
22 to people who use IBM EDA toolsets.
23
25 -n,--nocli <directory name>
26 Use file requester for dumpfile name.
27 -f,--dump <filename>
29 Specify dumpfile name.
30 -F,--fastload
32 generate/use VCD recoder fastload files. This is similar to the
33 -g,--giga option, however the spill file generated is not
34 deleted. Reloading the VCD file another time (either through
35 pressing the reload button or by re-invoking gtkwave at a later
36 time) will use this generated spill file rather than read the
37 value change section of the VCD file. This will speed up
38 reloads on large files greatly as only the variable declaration
39 section needs to be parsed. Note that the spill file contains
40 the file size and modification date of the VCD file in order to
41 detect if it is stale and needs to be regenerated.
42 -o,--optimize
44 optimize VCD to FST. This will automatically call vcd2fst(1) to
45 perform the file conversion. This option is highly recommended
46 with large VCD files in order to cut down on the memory usage
47 required for file viewing. Can be used in conjunction with
48 -v,--vcd.
49 -r,--rcfile <filename>
51 Specify override .gtkwaverc filename.
52 -i,--indirect <filename>
54 Specify indirect facs file name. The file contains a series of
55 regular expressions used to limit what signals can be browsed.
56 Signal names which match any of the regular expressions will be
57 viewable. Typically, indirect files are used to reduce memory
58 requirements for extremely large models containing millions of
59 facilities or to strip out top-level hierarchy clutter from
60 BugSpray models. This feature is only available with the AET2
61 loader.
62 -l,--logfile <filename>
64 Specify simulation logfile name. Multiple logfiles may be spec‐
65 ified by preceding each with the command flag. By selecting the
66 numbers in the text widget, the marker will immediately zoom to
67 the specific time value.
68 -d,--defaultskip
70 If there is not a .gtkwaverc file in the home directory or cur‐
71 rent directory and it is not explicitly specified on the command
72 line, when this option is enabled, do not use an implicit con‐
73 figuration file and instead default to the old "whitescreen"
74 behavior.
75 -D,--dualid <which>
77 Specify multisession identifier information. The format of
78 "which" is m+nnnnnnnn where m is the session number 0 or 1 and
79 nnnnnnnn is a hexadecimal value indicating the shared memory ID
80 of an array of two gtkwave_dual_ipc_t data structures. The
81 intended use of this flag is for front ends such as twinwave(1).
82 -s,--start <time>
84 Specify start time for LXT2/VZT block skip.
85 -e,--end <time>
87 Specify end time for LXT2/VZT block skip.
88 -t,--stems <filename>
90 Specify stems file for source code annotation. This will auto‐
91 matically launch the rtlbrowse(1) helper process. See vermin(1)
92 for information on stems file generation.
93 -c,--cpu <numcpus>
95 Specify number of CPUs available for parallelizable ops (e.g.,
96 block prefetching on VZT reads).
97 -N,--nowm
99 Disable window manager for most windows. The intended use of
100 this is to be used in conjunction with the --script option, how‐
101 ever this also can be used to reparent into an alternate window
102 manager.
103 -M,--nomenus
105 Do not render menubar. This is mainly used for making a
106 restricted applet that cannot initiate file I/O on its own, how‐
107 ever it also can be used as a workaround in earlier versions of
108 GTK+ that do not handle GTKSocket/GTKPlug focus interactions
109 properly.
110 -S,--script <filename>
112 Specify Tcl command script file for execution.
113 -T,--tcl_init <filename>
115 Specify Tcl command script to be loaded on startup. Implies
116 --wish command flag.
117 -W,--wish
119 Enable Tcl command line on stdio. All script commands can be
120 typed in on stdin.
121 -R,--repscript <filename>
123 Specify Tcl command script for periodic execution.
124 -P,--repperiod <value>
126 Specifies delay in milliseconds between successive executions of
127 the repscript. Default is 500.
128 -X,--xid <XID>
130 Specify XID of window for a GtkPlug to connect to. GTKWave does
131 not directly render to a window but instead renders into a Gtk‐
132 Plug expecting a GtkSocket at the other end. Note that there
133 are issues with accelerators working properly so menus are dis‐
134 abled in the componentized version of GTKWave when it functions
135 as a plug-in.
136 -1,--rpcid <RPCID>
138 Specify RPCID of a gtkwave_server to connect to. This is of
139 interest only if it is intended to send remote commands to GTK‐
140 Wave, for example for simulators to signal to GTKWave that a sim
141 job has completed and is ready to be viewed.
142 -I,--interactive
144 Specifies that "interactive" VCD mode is to be used which allows
145 a viewer to navigate a VCD trace while GTKWave is processing the
146 VCD file. When this option is used, the filename is overloaded
147 such that it is the hexadecimal value for the shared memory ID
148 of a writer. Note that the shared memory ID can be passed
149 straight from stdin by using the --vcd option; see the manpage
150 for shmidcat(1) for more details.
151 -L,--legacy
153 Specifies that the viewer should use legacy VCD mode rather than
154 the VCD recoder. Note that using legacy mode will require con‐
155 siderably more memory than the recoder and its use is discour‐
156 aged for very large traces.
157 -g,--giga
159 Specifies that the viewer should use gigabyte mempacking when
160 recoding (possibly slower). This is equivalent to setting the
161 vlist_spill and vlist_prepack flags in the rc file.
162 -C,--comphier
164 Specifies that the viewer should use compressed hierarchy names
165 when loading the dumpfile (available for VCD recoder, LXT, LXT2,
166 and VZT). This will use less memory at the expense of compres‐
167 sion/decompression delay.
168 -v,--vcd
170 Use stdin as a VCD dumpfile.
171 -O,--output <filename>
173 Specify filename for stdout/stderr redirect. To disable mes‐
174 sages to the console, use /dev/null as the filename.
175 -z,--slider-zoom
177 Enable slider stretch zoom for the horizontal time slider.
178 Clicking then dragging the very left or right edge of the slider
179 can be used to provide fine-grained real-time zooming.
180 -V,--version
182 Display version banner then exit.
183 -h,--help
185 Display help then exit.
186 -x,--exit
188 Exit after loading trace (for loader benchmarking).
189
191 ~/.gtkwaverc (see manpage gtkwaverc(5))
192
195 To run this program the standard way type:
196 gtkwave dumpfile.vcd
197 Alternatively you can run it with a save file as:
199 gtkwave dumpfile.vcd dumpfile.sav
200 To run interactively using shared memory handle 0x00050003:
202 gtkwave -I 00050003 dumpfile.sav
203 Note that to pass non-flag items which start with a dash, that it is
205 required to specify -- in order to turn off flag parsing. A second --
206 will disable parsing of any following arguments such that they can be
207 passed on to Tcl scripts and retrieved via gtkwave::getArgv.
208 Command line options are not necessary for representing the dumpfile,
210 savefile, and rcfile names. They are merely provided to allow specify‐
211 ing them out of order.
212
214 AIX requires -bmaxdata:0x80000000 (-bmaxdata:0xd0000000/dsa for AIX
215 5.3) to be added to your list of compiler flags for xlc if you want
216 GTKWave to be able to access more than 256MB of virtual memory. The
217 value shown allows the VMM to use up to 2GB (3.25GB AIX5.3). This may
218 be necessary for very large traces.
219 Shift and Page operations using the wave window hscrollbar may be non‐
221 functional as you move away from the dump start for very large traces.
222 A trace that goes out to 45 billion ticks has been known to exhibit
223 this problem. This stems from using the gfloat element of the horizon‐
224 tal slider to encode the time value for the left margin. The result is
225 a loss of precision for very large values. Use the hotkeys or buttons
226 at the top of the screen if this is a problem.
227 When running under Cygwin, it is required to enable Cygserver if shared
229 memory IPC is being used. Specifically, this occurs when rtlbrowse(1)
230 is launched as a helper process. See the Cygwin documentation for more
231 information on how to enable Cygserver.
232
234 Anthony Bybell <bybell@nc.rr.com>
235
237 gtkwaverc(5) lxt2vcd(1) vcd2lxt(1) vcd2lxt2(1) vzt2vcd(1) vcd2vzt(1)
238 vermin(1) rtlbrowse(1) twinwave(1) shmidcat(1)
239Anthony Bybell 3.3.20 GTKWAVE(1)