When you perform an action in the Vivado IDE, such as using a menu command or performing drag and drop, the tool writes a Tcl command equivalent to the Tcl Console. The Tcl Console shows both the Tcl command and a transcript of the results. From the Tcl Console, you can do the following:
- To show just the Tcl commands and hide the transcript, select the
Collapse all
toolbar button. Then, copy
and paste the Tcl commands from the Tcl Console to create Tcl scripts. - To show the command history in the Tcl Console, type the following in the command
line entry box at the bottom of the Tcl Console:
history
In addition, the Vivado IDE writes the Tcl commands to a
journal file (vivado.jou) and a log file (vivado.log). The vivado.jou file contains just the commands, and the vivado.log file contains both commands and any returned
messages. When the Vivado IDE is launched, backup versions of the journal file
(vivado_<id>.backup.jou) and log file
(vivado_<id>.backup.log) are written to
save the details of the previous run. The <id> is
a unique identifier that enables the tools to create and store multiple backup versions
of the log and journal files.
You can create Tcl scripts by copying commands from the journal file for later replay. To view the journal file, select . You might need to edit this file to remove any erroneous commands or commands from multiple sessions prior to replay. Not every action logs a Tcl command into the journal file. For more information on journal files, see Output Files in Appendix B.