NOTE: It is more complex to set up OpenLane without a Docker container. If you are a novice user, it is recommended to use the Docker container.
At its core, OpenLane is a set of scripts working with a set of tools. If you'd like to avoid using a Docker container, you can, but you will have to set up all of the tools required by OpenLane on your computer. We do provide a script to assist you with that.
python3 -m pip install pyyaml venvYou can run python3 ./env.py tool-list for a list. There are at least a dozen tools to install here. Luckily, you don't have to install them all one-by-one: There is an installation script that installs most of them.
You can invoke python3 ./env.py local-install. This tool copies the skeleton and installs all the tools to $OPENLANE_ROOT_DIR/install. Furthermore, if you are on CentOS 7, macOS or Ubuntu 20.04, the installer will offer to install all the required apt, yum or brew packages for you.
The tools will all be installed with ./install as a prefix. You'll find all the repos in ./install/build/repos and a list of versions in ./install/build/versions.
DO NOTE: We expect you to get some tools on your own, because said tools are too complex to build in an automated fashion. Namely:
After the installer is done, you can simply invoke ./flow.tcl outside of Docker and it should work okay.
flow.tcl looks for a file called ./install/env.tcl before it does anything. If it finds it, it sources it. The ./install directory is aliased in Docker environments, which already have the proper tools installed.
./install/env.tcl contains the necessary environment variables to add the installed tools to PATH and activate the Python virtual environment.