Hog 2023.1: a collaborative management tool to handle Git-based HDL repository

Davide Cieri, Nicolò Vladi Biesuz, Rimsky Alejandro Rojas Caballero, Francesco Gonnella, Nico Giangiacomi, Guillermo Loustau De Linares and Andrew Peck

Abstract

Hog (HDL on git) is an open-source tool designed to manage Git-based HDL repositories. It aims to simplify HDL project development, maintenance, and versioning by using Git to guarantee synthesis and implementation reproducibility and binary file traceability. This is ensured by linking each produced binary file to a specific Git commit, embedding the Git commit hash (SHA) into the binary file via HDL generics stored in firmware registers.

Hog is released twice a year, in January and in June. We present here the latest stable version 2023.1, which introduces major novel features, such as the support for Microchip Libero IDE, and the capability to run the Hog Continuous Integration (Hog-CI) workflow with GitHub Actions.

A plan to integrate Hog with the OpenCores repository is also described, which is expected to be completed for Hog release 2023.2.