Containerization as a means of extending the lifetime of HDL development tools

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This presentation will discuss the challenges posed by the fact that most HDL development tools only support a few fixed, selected version of OSes, effectively tying their end-of-life with theirs. Porting the design to newer versions of the tool may not always be the best option as it may require significant time and resources, as well as extensive testing, especially in reliability-critical scenarios. Staying on outdated distributions is not advisable either, as it may leave the system vulnerable to security threats, and prevent access to newer features and software that may be useful for development. To address this challenge, the presentation proposes containerization using distrobox, which allows any HDL tool to run inside an officially supported distribution and enables easy integration onto the developer's host OS, transparently decoupling the host's OS from the tool's one. The presentation will provide an overview on how to use distrobox to containerize any software, with an emphasis on HDL tools, making this presentation relevant to anyone working with HDL development tools wishing to use their tools for longer or on a different OS, and particularly to those impacted by the end of life of CC7.