# Installation of ghdl

The w11 project uses the open source VHDL simulator **ghdl**.

It used to be part of most distributions. Unfortunately the Debian maintainer 
for ghdl refused at some point to integrate ghdl into Debian Etch. Therefore
ghdl was part of Debian 5 "Lenny", and again of Debian 6 "Squeeze", and is 
missing again in Debian 7 "Wheezy" (the current 'stable').

The glitch at Debian unfortunately lead to the removal of ghdl from Ubuntu, 
which is based on Debian. Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid" up to 11.10 "Oneiric" included 
ghdl, the currently maintained versions 12.04 LTS "Precise", 14.04 LTS "Trusty"
and 14.10 "Utopic" unfortunately don't.

To install ghdl on an up-to-date Debian or Ubuntu systems you have the
following options _(as of early February 2015)_:

- Ubuntu Precise and Trusty

  Thanks to Peter Gavin Ubuntu packages for GHDL are available from his PPA
  'Personal Package Archives', see

        https://launchpad.net/~pgavin/+archive/ghdl

  So to install ghdl under Ubuntu use

        sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pgavin/ghdl
        sudo apt-get update
        sudo apt-get install ghdl

- Debian Wheezy

  Thanks to Joris van Rantwijk Debian packages for GHDL are available
  from the web site

        http://jorisvr.nl/ghdl_debian.html

  There are also Ubuntu packages, but Joris focus is clearly on Debian.

Only Debian and Ubuntu are actively used by the w11a developer. The situation 
for other Linux distributions is therefore just taken from the respective web 
sites _(status October 2013)_:

- **Suse**  
  For Suse 12.2 and 12.3 un-official ghdl packages are available, but they
  seem to be based on the long obsolete ghdl version 0.27.
- **Redhat/Fedora**  
  For Fedora 18,19, and 20 packages are available based on ghdl 0.29
- **Gentoo**  
  Packages, marked 'unstable', are available based on ghdl 0.29 and 0.27
