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From: cfk (cfk AT pacbell DOT net) Date: Fri Mar 28 2003 - 14:39:22 EST
Dear Stefan:
Thank you for your e-mail. Progress is being made. I am hoping you will
bear with me for another e-mail or two while I try to get to the "and thus
we are done" stage also. I am cc-ing this to the magic users group in hopes
it might prove useful to Tim and others also.
Firstly, I have commented out the last lines in
/home/cad/lib/magic/sys/.magic dealing with both plot and scheme (the scm
invocations). I have also commented out the option statements for zoomTitle
& zoomOutline as described in your dif file earlier. I then invoke
'magic -w' as you show:
% magic -w
Main console display active (Tcl8.3.3 / Tk8.3.3)
% package require spice
Cell /usr/lib/tclX8.3/../libtclx8.3.so couldnt be found
Creating new cell
can't find package Tclx
% ;load /usr/lib/libspice
% ; package require spice
0.2.6
Now I have to mention at this stage that the system I am running this on is
a RH8 with all packages installed, including Tclx. The red hat installation
did put a libtclx.so into /usr/lib and there is a /usr/lib/tclX8.3 with a
pkgIndex.tcl and other files. Also, it seems that spice loaded OK the second
time. Anyway, this is probably a -exact, or a path thing. Let me go on to
the next step where I have an inverter that was extracted from
http://www.rsl.ukans/~linhard/magic which is the magic file I have been
working with. The .cir file I am using merely gets the nfet/pfet models to
level 2 NMOS/PMOS and is a slightly modified version of the .cir file at
http://bear.ces.cwru.edu/eecs_cad/cad_spice.html which appears to be a very
useful reference for spice circuits pertaining to an inverter circuit
extraction from magic. Anyway, here goes the next step or two.
%;cd /home/global/test2
%;spice::source testx_trans.cir
%;spice::run
%;spice:;asciiplot v(out)
At this point, I have a successful spice run and a successful spice plot of
the out voltage of the invf100.mag file (where I changed the input from A1
to in and the output from O to out for personal reasons) from ukans where
the testx_trans added a power supply, ground connection.
%;plot out
%:plot in
And yes, there are now two graphs, one of the input and one of the output of
a magic inverter cell. By, the way, I can just do a
%;load /usr/lib/libspice
and get everything running without the 'package require spice'. I think the
issues are very minor and perhaps could be just worked out so the
occaisional user can get his magic/irsim/tclspice working without having to
understand everything about paths, packages and such. I am hoping you might
consider working to make it easier on the user.
I also have a couple of suggestions along that line. Both magic and irsim
have a make config step, tclspice has arguments to ./configure. Perhaps
tclspice could have a make config step and avoid the ./configure arguments
and have its make procedure more like irsim & magic (or conversly, magic
could have its make config changed to ./configure arguements). Similarly,
magic and irsim do a 'make tcl' followed by a 'make install-tcl' and
tclspice does a 'make tcl' followed by a 'make tcl_install'. I find I now
have to look it up everytime I compile since they are different. Perhaps
tclspice could change the make tcl_install to make install-tcl or conversly
(well, you know what I was about to type, but my vote is really to change
tclspice instead of magic and irsim, but youse folks can work that part
out).
Anyway, not criticism Stefan, I am trying to help and right now I am
admiring two wonderful plots from a magic cell on my screen. Thank you very
much for your help.
Charles
Subject: Re: [Ngspice-users] tclspice & magic
> On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 20:46, cfk wrote:
> > The invocation of "magic -w" creates a magic window, a tkcon and a
tclspice
> > graph that is blank. A "load /usr/lib/libspice" does get access to spice
and
> > I can spice an inverter extracted from magic with exttospice and plot it
> > with ";spice::asciiplot v(out)", I just cant do a ";spice::plot v(out)"
from
> > within magic (works outside of magic with ngspice directly from a bash
> > prompt, draws the output voltage with blt, no problem).
> >
> > Now it gets interesting. I can tell that the plot procedure in
pkgIndex.tcl
> > is being called as a consequence of the default loading of magic's tcl
stuff
> > even though magic knows nothing about spice at this point. It appears
after
> > reading mucho documentation that the tcl interpreter goes looking for
all
> > the "pkgIndex.tcl" files when it needs a procedure called for instance
> > "plot". And there is one in ../spice/pkgIndex.tcl, and it is called.
>
> > So, I recompiled magic without the plot module, still same effect. Next,
I
> > renamed the plot as xplot in pkgIndex.tcl and voila, no blank plot
anymore.
> > I also put a puts inside pkgIndex.tcl so I would be told it was
executing,
> > and it is executing when I think it is executing.
>
> This is a namespace conflict which I have known for quite a while. In
> the pkgIndex.tcl there are a lot of global variables which get in the
> way of quite a few packages. Ideally it needs to be cleaned up with all
> the functions / variables in pkgIndex.tcl being in a namespace and only
> sourced from a seperate file when the user runs "package require spice"
>
> This would also speed up the execution time of tclsh as at the moment
> every time it runs it sources the entire pkgIndex.tcl file.
>
> I am not the author of the current pkgIndex.tcl but I have CCed him
> (Adrian Dawe). I think he may have done some work on the clean ups
> already.
>
> > Perhaps some hints on the care and feeding of pkgIndex.tcl:plot could be
> > suggested??
>
> I only really look after the C-code stuff. But it is good to see that
> that part works.
>
> Ok here are the mods I did to get it to work:
>
> Edit your .magic file normally found at $CAD_HOME/lib/magic/sys/.magic
> and remove the plot commands at the bottom of the file:
> ------
> # additions for plot package
>
> #plot parameter spoolCommand "echo use 'lpr -P%s -v -s -JMagic %s' to
print plot"
> #plot parameter directory "."
> ------
>
> This will stop the blank plot window appearing when you start magic, as
> when you start magic wish sources /usr/lib/spice/pkgIndex.tcl which
> creates a "plot" command whether you want to use spice or not, which
> overwrites the magic plot command. .magic is then sourced by magic and
> invokes the spice plot command which creates the blank plot.
>
> Now the pkgIndex.tcl file needs some fixes, in particular the options
> lines which you found before. I commented these out. I also removed the
> package require Tclx line as it is not required.
>
> Now I can do the following (PS. magic plot is compiled in but it seems
> /usr/lib/spice/pkgIndex.tcl overwrites it with it's own function)
>
> magic -w
> [ wait for the magic tcl prompt ]
> [ at the magic prompt we get ]
> [ snip .... ]
> Main console display active (Tcl8.3.4 / Tk8.3.4)
> % package require spice
> 0.2.7
> % spice::source array.spice
> % spice::step 10
> % plot 3019
> list add : 3019
> 2
> [ The plot pops up! ]
>
> And thus we are done!
>
> Attached it the patch I used to /usr/lib/spice/pkgIndex.tcl to get it
> working here. This if for tclspice-0.2.7.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Stefan
>
> --
> Stefan Jones <stefan.jones AT multigig DOT com>
> Multigig Ltd
>
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