topola/INSTALL.md

Installing Topola

Installing Topola from Source

Prerequisites

Building Topola from source requires git and cargo to be installed on your system. Follow the instructions in above links to obtain these.

Obtaining the source

Clone the repository:

git clone https://codeberg.org/topola/topola.git

Preparing to build

Change your working directory to your clone of Topola's repository:

cd topola

Command-line application

Run the following command to build and install Topola's command-line application:

cargo install --locked --path . --features cli

The application will now be invokable from your terminal as topola.

Autorouting example

The following example will autoroute a KiCad project of a simple THT diode bridge rectifier.

cd tests/single_layer/data/tht_diode_bridge_rectifier/
topola tht_diode_bridge_rectifier.dsn tht_diode_bridge_rectifier.ses autoroute_all.cmd

Viewing the results

You can view the results of the autorouting in KiCad if you have it installed. First, open the layout in the KiCad PCB Editor:

pcbnew tht_diode_bridge_rectifier.kicad_pcb

Then choose File > Import > Specctra Session...** from the menu bar. In the newly opened file dialog choose the file named tht__diode_bridge_rectifier.ses. This will load the autorouted traces.

Egui GUI application

The following command will build and install Topola's Egui graphical user interface application:

cargo install --locked --path . --features egui --bin egui

You can then invoke the application from your terminal by running

topola-egui

Running Topola in a Web browser

Topola's Egui application can be built to run in a Web browser using Trunk, which will be installed with the following command:

cargo binstall trunk

To build and open Topola in your browser, run

trunk serve

Automated tests

Topola has automated tests to make sure its basic functionalities work. To execute these, run

cargo test

Contracts

When trying to locate the source of a bug, it may be helpful to enable contracts (yes, this Wikipedia article needs improvement), which are nothing else but slightly enchanced assertions.

Unfortunately, the contracts library which we have been using enforces post-conditions via closures, which have deal-breaking limitations. To bypass these we have forked and modified it to use try blocks instead. The fork is vendored in the vendored/contracts/ directory.

However, try blocks aren't present in stable Rust versions yet, so to use these you need to set up your toolchain to use a nightly version of Rust.

Nightly Rust

To use nightly Rust, run the following command:

rustup override set nightly

You can go back to stable with

rustup override unset

Enabling contracts

To enable contracts, simply add a --no-default-features switch. This switches off a default feature that prevents contracts from executing. For example, to build tests with contracts, simply run

cargo test --no-default-features

Of course, you can enable contracts for any build target. For example, the following command will build the Egui application with debug profile and contracts enabled:

cargo build --features egui --bin topola-egui --no-default-features