Welcome
What's New
View new features for FlowTracer 2025.1.0.
FlowTracer Overview
An advanced mission critical dependency management platform for developing and executing flows.
FlowTracer Tutorials
Discover FlowTracer functionality with interactive tutorials.
Altair FlowTracer User Guide
FlowTracer is a complete system to create, manage, and execute design flows.
Altair FlowTracer Administrator Guide
This manual is aimed at the person who will be the administrator for FlowTracer. This person will be responsible for configuring the network resources, setting up the licensing, and establishing security and access rules for the system.
Altair FlowTracer Developer Guide
- FlowTracer Roles
  When using FlowTracer in large deployments, three main roles emerge: Administrator, Developer and User. In smaller organizations, a given person may have multiple roles, but the duties of each role still exist.
- Environment Management
  To ensure the correct and repeatable behavior of the tools, the environment must be controlled. This chapter explains how VOV supports multiple reusable environments.
- Execute Jobs From the Command Line
- Flowbuilding
  The trace is built using a combination of techniques.
- Flow Description Language (FDL)
  - Flow Language Procedures
  - FDL Procedures Reference
    - FDL_A
      Add annotations to the most recently declared node.
    - FDL AD
      Declare an artificial dependency between two jobs.
    - FDL CAPSULE
    - FDL D
      Set the database for subsequent files.
    - FDL E
    - FDL FLAGS
    - FDL I
      Declare an input dependency.
    - FDL indir
      Execute a code fragment in a directory.
    - FDL INSTRUMENTED
    - FDL J
      Declare a job and use the capsule to compute IO's (see also T and P).
    - FDL J_FINAL
    - FDL L
      Set the legal exit values for subsequent jobs.
    - FDL N
      Set the jobname.
    - FDL N2
    - FDL O
      Declare an output dependency. All jobs require at least one output to be valid.
    - FDL P
      Add a property to the most recently mentioned object.
    - FDL PARALLEL
      Declare the parallelism between two or more tasks and subflows (See also TASK and SERIAL).
    - FDL PJ
      Declare a job to be executed periodically (see also T and J).
    - FDL PRIORITY
      Set the priority to be used for the subsequent jobs.
    - FDL R
      Set resources for subsequent jobs.
    - FDL R2
    - FDL S
      Precise definition of a set of jobs.
    - FDL S+
      Append jobs to a set.
    - FDL SERIAL
      Serially order a number of tasks and subflows (See also TASK and PARALLEL).
    - FDL shift
      Get the next argument from argv
    - FDL START
      Start running jobs -- rarely used.
    - FDL STOP
    - FDL T
      Declare a job (see also PJ and J).
    - FDL T_FINAL
    - FDL TASK
      Declare a job with no specific dependencies (see also SERIAL and PARALLEL).
    - FDL X
      Set the expected duration for subsequent jobs.
    - FDL Z
      Set the zippable flag for a list of files.
  - J versus T
    In FDL there are two procedures that can be used to add a job to a flow: T and J. Which one should you use?
  - Build Flows with vovbuild
  - Conflicts in vovbuild
  - Use O_CONFLICT to Choose Behavior in Case of Output Conflict
  - vovbuild Argument Parsing
  - Task Oriented Flows
  - Dependencies in FDL
  - Forcing Dependencies
  - vtk_transition_add
  - Difference Between E and ves
  - Linear Coding in FDL
  - Set Creation in FDL
  - Conditional Flows
  - Decisions in Flows with IFJOB
  - Parse Configuration Files
  - RECONCILE_WITH_FILE_SYSTEM
  - Create Directories in FDL
  - File Generation in FDL
  - Generate FDL Using the Instrumentation Library
  - Run Jobs in an xterm
  - FDL and make Comparison
  - Run Interactive Jobs with vxt
  - Tcl Interface to Various Set Operations
- Tool Integration
- Integrate Difficult Tools
- Runtime Change Propagation Control
  The patented technique of Runtime Change Propagation Control (RCPC) provides the ability to stop the propagation of insignificant changes through the flow.
- Flow Library
  FlowTracer captures your design in design flows described by Flow.tcl files. The Flow Library is meant to help users locate and deploy instances of packaged flows bound to their specific design data.
- Files, Equivalences, Exclusions
  The files used in a project reside in one or more directories spread all around your filesystems. Each logical name defined in the equiv.tcl file implicitly declares the root of a workspace. You can browse the workspaces using the browser interface.
- Makefile Conversion
- Advanced Tasker Topics
- Resource Management
  The Resource Map Set represents the collection of resource maps that have been assigned to a project and the constraints associated with such resources.
- CGI Interface
- Events
  Every change in the trace is recorded as an event, which is then sent to all clients that subscribe to them.
- Miscellaneous

FDL_A

Add annotations to the most recently declared node.

Arguments

note checkFlag

Description

Adds Annotations to the most recently declared node, be it an input, an output, or a job. If checkFlag is true, the procedure checks the list of existing annotations in order to avoid duplicates.

Example

J vw sim $block.v $block.sti
A "Run the simulation on block $block"
I $block.sti
A "The stimulus file"

# The binary 'clevercopy' does not need a wrapper
J clevercopy $file $goldDir
A "Publish $file"