lepton-netlist(1)

💖 lepton-netlist — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, welcome to lepton-netlist(1), section 1 of the manual. yes it's the Lepton EDA netlist extraction & generation tool and yes it's about to be your new obsession. let's go 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

lepton-netlist — Lepton EDA Netlist Extraction and Generation

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

lepton-netlist [OPTION ...] [-g BACKEND | -f FILE] [--] FILE ...

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so lepton-netlist is a netlist extraction and generation tool, and it's part of the Lepton EDA (Electronic Design Automation) toolset. it takes one or more electronic schematics as input, and outputs a netlist. and what even is a netlist? it's a machine-interpretable description of the way that components in an electronic circuit are connected together — like, the group chat of your circuit telling everyone who's connected to who 💬 — and it's commonly used as the input to a PCB layout program such as pcb(1) or to a simulator such as gnucap(1).

a normal lepton-netlist run is carried out in two steps. first, the lepton-netlist frontend loads the specified human-readable schematic *FILE*s, and compiles them to an in-memory netlist description. next, a backend is used to export the connection and component data to one of many supported netlist formats. two-step slay, no notes ✨

lepton-netlist is extensible, using the Scheme programming language. she's flexible like that 💜

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🎀 GENERAL OPTIONS 🎀

• -q — Quiet mode. turns off all warnings/notes/messages. silence, but make it fashion 🤫
• -v, --verbose — Verbose mode. outputs all diagnostic information. she's telling you EVERYTHING.
• -L DIRECTORY — prepends DIRECTORY to the list of directories to be searched for Scheme files.
• -g BACKEND — specify the netlist backend to be used. this is the main character option tbh.
• -f FILE — load and use netlist backend from FILE. FILE is expected to have name like "gnet-NAME.scm" and contain entry point function NAME (where NAME is the backend's name). iykyk.
• -O STRING — pass an option string to the backend.
• -b, --list-backends — prints a list of available netlist backends. window shopping 🛍️
• -o FILE — specify the filename for the generated netlist. by default, output is directed to output.net. if - is given instead of a filename, the output is directed to the standard output.
• -l FILE — specify a Scheme file to be loaded before the backend is loaded or executed. this option can be specified multiple times. stack 'em up 🫶
• -m FILE — specify a Scheme file to be loaded between loading the backend and executing it. this option can be specified multiple times.
• -c EXPR — specify a Scheme expression to be executed during lepton-netlist startup. this option can be specified multiple times.
• -i — after the schematic files have been loaded and compiled, and after all Scheme files have been loaded, but before running the backend, enter a Scheme read-eval-print loop. girlies love a REPL 💖
• -h, --help — print a help message.
• -V, --version — print lepton-netlist version information.
• -- — treat all remaining arguments as schematic filenames. use this if you have a schematic filename which begins with -. lowkey a lifesaver.

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👑 BACKENDS 👑

currently, lepton-netlist includes the following backends:

• allegro — Allegro netlist format.
• bae — Bartels Autoengineer netlist format.
• bom, bom2 — Bill of materials generation.
• calay — Calay netlist format.
• cascade — RF Cascade netlist format
• drc, drc2 — Design rule checkers (drc2 is recommended).
• eagle — Eagle netlist format.
• ewnet — Netlist format for National Instruments ULTIboard layout tool.
• futurenet2 — Futurenet2 netlist format.
• geda — Native gEDA netlist format (mainly used for testing and diagnostics).
• gossip — Gossip netlist format.
• gsch2pcb — backend used for pcb(1) file layout generation by gsch2pcb(1). it is not recommended to use this backend directly.
• liquidpcb — LiquidPCB netlist format.
• mathematica — netlister for analytical circuit solving using Mathematica.
• maxascii — MAXASCII netlist format.
• osmond — Osmond netlist format.
• pads — PADS netlist format.
• partslist1, partslist2, partslist3 — Bill of materials generation backends (alternatives to bom and bom2).
• PCB — pcb(1) netlist format.
• pcbpins — generates a pcb(1) action file for forward annotating pin/pad names from schematic to layout.
• protelII — Protel II netlist format.
• redac — RACAL-REDAC netlist format.
• spice, spice-sdb — SPICE-compatible netlist format (spice-sdb is recommended). suitable for use with gnucap(1).
• switcap — SWITCAP switched capacitor simulator netlist format.
• systemc — Structural SystemC code generation.
• tango — Tango netlist format.
• tEDAx — Trivial EDA eXchange (tEDAx) format.
• vams — VHDL-AMS code generation.
• verilog — Verilog code generation.
• vhdl — VHDL code generation.
• vipec — ViPEC Network Analyser netlist format.

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

these examples assume that you have a stack_1.sch in the current directory.

lepton-netlist requires that at least one schematic to be specified on the command line:

./lepton-netlist stack_1.sch

this is not very useful since it does not direct lepton-netlist to do anything. it's giving "showed up to the party but didn't say hi" 😭

specify a backend name with -g to get lepton-netlist to output a netlist:

./lepton-netlist -g geda stack_1.sch

the netlist output will be written to a file called output.net in the current working directory.

you can specify the output filename by using the -o option:

./lepton-netlist -g geda stack_1.sch -o /tmp/stack.netlist

output will now be directed to /tmp/stack.netlist. periodt.

you could run (for example) the spice-sdb backend against the schematic if you specified -g spice-sdb, or you could generate a bill of materials for the schematic using -g partslist1. choose your own adventure bestie ✨

to obtain a Scheme prompt to run Scheme expressions directly, you can use the -i option.

./lepton-netlist -i stack_1.sch

lepton-netlist will load stack_1.sh, and then enter an interactive Scheme read-eval-print loop.

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

see the AUTHORS file included with this program. the whole squad is credited there 💖

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright © 2012-2017 gEDA Contributors. Copyright © 2017-2022 Lepton Developers. License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later. Please see the COPYING file included with this program for full details.

this is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. there is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. (yes, NO WARRANTY, all caps, we are not playing 💀)

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

lepton-schematic(1), lepton-symcheck(1), pcb(1), gnucap(1)

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate 🎀

this was Lepton EDA's lepton-netlist(1) manual, dated May 29, 2022, from version 1.9.18.20220529. go forth and netlist, queen 👑💖