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Installing GTK wave under linux with no root permission.

1. To install GTK wave on linux is simple. On my assorted debian machines, at home, I become root and use apt-get install gtkwave command.


2. At work it is a different ball game. In some places the system administrator refuses to install such sharewares. To overcome I downloaded the sources and build it.


3. During the build some packages were missing and again with no root password, I have to find a solution for this as well.


4. First some GTK wave options, are only nice-to-have and can be removed from current build, using the disable switch.


5. For others I needed to download the required package and build to in a place where I have access. I then copied the build result to a directory in my PATH (~/bin/) and use the includedir switch.


6. These are the commands that I used:.
cp gperf-3.0.4/src/gperf ~/bin
./configure --disable-xz --disable-tcl --includedir=/home/krengelp/bin


7. Since performance might be an issue on large VCD data bases, one can consider using LXT format instead of VCD. Another thing to remember is that the multiple CPU usage:

gtkw ncsim.vcd c_2.sav --cpu=4


8. Note: when I tried to install it on my debian at home, with full root permission, I had some problems. I had to disable a few options and managed configure to end it job successfully. Configure is the first step in manual installation. Follows make and make install.
   
   ./configure --disable-xz --disable-tcl
   
   Next I removed the old version, which was installed with apt:
   
   apt-get remove gtkwave
   


9. Recently I have upgraded my gtkwave. I have downloaded sources of version 3.3.45 and use same instruction as above. The installation was done on an old lenny debian release.
   To enable its usage, I added the following lines to my alias file:
   
   
   1. gt_msg="this is my own gtkwave"
      
   2. alias gtkwave="echo ;tput bold;echo $gt_msg;tput sgr0; echo ;sleep1;~/Home_1/pini/gtkwave_from_source/gtkwave-3.3.45/src/gtkwave "
      
   
   I have also verified the twin wave works fine in this build:
   
   /mnt/Home/pini/Home_1/pini/gtkwave_from_source/gtkwave-3.3.45/src/twinwave a.lxt ghdl.sav + b.lxt ghdl.sav &
   

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