The Assistant view provides a project tree to manage build configurations, run configurations, and set the attributes of these configurations. It is a companion view to the Explorer view and displays directly below it in the default Vitis IDE perspective. The following figure shows an example Assistant view and its tree structure.
The objects displayed in the Assistant view hierarchy include the top-level system project,
host project, hardware kernel projects, and the hw_link project. For
each of these projects the different build configurations are also displayed: the
software emulation and hardware emulation build configurations, and the hardware build
configuration. The build configurations define the build target as described in Build Targets, and specify options for the
compilation and linking process.
- Emulation-SW builds are complete as indicated by the green check box
-
Emulation-HW builds need to be updated for the
hardware kernel and
hw_linkprojects, as indicated by the yellow exclamation (!) - Hardware builds are not built
When you select a build configuration, such as Emulation-HW build and click the Settings button (
), the Vitis Build Configuration Settings dialog box opens. You will use this Settings dialog box to configure the build
process for the specific emulation or hardware target.
Within the hierarchy of these build configuration is the binary container (or .xclbin), the hardware function or functions, the run configuration, and any reports or summaries generated by the build or run process. When you select the hardware function for a specific build configuration and click the Settings button, the Vitis Hardware Function Settings dialog box is displayed. You will use this dialog box to specify the number of compute units for each kernel, assign compute units to SLRs, and assign kernel ports to global memory.
After a specific build configuration has been built, launch configurations become available for the project. There are two types of launch configurations:
- Run configurations specify the profile used for running the
compiled and linked application; it defines the environment and options for running
the host application and kernel code. Use the Run command (
) on the
toolbar menu to access run configurations. This opens the Vitis Run and Debug Configuration Settings dialog box, where you can configure the run before
launching it. - Debug configurations specify the profile for debugging the
application. It launches the environment needed to interactively debug both the host
and kernel code. You can access debug configurations through the Debug command
(
) on
the toolbar menu. Refer to Vitis IDE Debug Flow for
more information.
Within the Assistant view, the View menu includes options that affect what the Assistant view displays, or affect how the Assistant view interacts with other views. Open the View menu by left-clicking the menu command to display the following options:
- Show Active Build Configurations Only
- When enabled, the Assistant view will only show the active build configuration for each project. This option can be useful to reduce the clutter in the Assistant view. To change the active configuration, select Active build configuration in the Project Editor view.
- Link with Console
- When enabled, the build console in the Console view switches automatically to match the currently selected build configuration in the Assistant view. If not enabled, the build console does not automatically change to match the Assistant view.
- Link with Guidance
- When enabled, the Guidance tab of the Console view automatically switches to match the current selection in the Assistant view.
For each of the build configurations, reports are generated during the build and run process and are displayed in the Assistant view. The different reports are grouped into Compile Summary, Link Summary, Package Summary, and Run Summary which can be viewed in the Vitis analyzer tool as described in Using the Vitis Analyzer. You can right-click one of these summary reports in the Assistant view and select Open in Vitis Analyzer as shown below.
