Setup GHDL in GitHub Action Workflows

This composite action, installs GHDL in a GitHub Action's workflow job.

Features

• Select GHDL version:
  • tagged release like 5.0.1, 5.1.1, 6.0.0, or
  • latest release, currently 6.0.0, or
  • nightly release (rolling release).
  • latest release (retrieved from latest nightly release's inventory.json).
• Select GHDL backend:
  • mcode
  • LLVM
  • LLVM-JIT (new)
  • GCC (deprecated).
• Activate an investigation mode (check and show GHDL installation, ...).
• Supported runner OS' provided by GitHub (automatically detected):
  • Ubuntu 24.04 (LTS),
  • Ubuntu 26.04 (LTS),
  • macOS-14 (aarch64),
  • macOS-15 (aarch64),
  • Windows Server 2025.

Usage

jobs:
  GHDL-on-Ubuntu:
    runs-on: ubuntu-24.04
    steps:
      - name: Run VHDL Simulation
        uses: ghdl/setup-ghdl@v1
        with:
          version: nightly
          backend: mcode
          investigate: true
          
  GHDL-on-macOS:
    runs-on: macOS-15
    steps:
      - name: Run VHDL Simulation
        uses: ghdl/setup-ghdl@v1
        with:
          version: nightly
          backend: llvm

  GHDL-on-Windows:
    runs-on: windows-2025
    steps:
      - name: Run VHDL Simulation
        uses: ghdl/setup-ghdl@v1
        with:
          version: nightly
          backend: mcode

  GHDL-on-Windows-with-UCRT64:
    runs-on: windows-2025
    steps:
      - name: 🟦 Setup MSYS2 for UCRT64
        uses: msys2/setup-msys2@v2
        with:
          msystem: ucrt64
          update: true

      - name: Run VHDL Simulation
        uses: ghdl/setup-ghdl@v1
        with:
          version: nightly
          backend: mcode
          runtime: ucrt64

Input Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
version	no	'nightly'	A tagged GHDL version (starting at v5.1.1), latest or nightly.
backend	no	'mcode'	GHDL backend: llvm, llvm-jit, mcode, gcc.
runtime	no	''	If runner OS is Windows, a MSYS2 runtime can be selected (mingw64, ucrt64). If not set, Windows native is used (not MSYS2 environment).
install-directory	no	'install'	Local installation directory, in case an archive asset is downloaded and extracted.
investigate	no	false	If enabled, more details are printed and check the GHDL installation is checked.

Output Parameters

Parameter	Description
ghdl-bin-directory	tbd
ghdl-lib-directory	tbd

Behavior and Dependencies

On Linux (Ubuntu)

• Download GHDL asset from https://github.com/ghdl/ghdl/releases as *.tar.gz and extract files into install-directory.
• Further dependencies will be installed using apt-get and reading the embedded ubuntu.requirements file.
• GHDL's bin directory will be added to PATH.

On macOS

• Download GHDL asset from https://github.com/ghdl/ghdl/releases as *.tar.gz and extract files into install-directory.
• All dependencies are contained within the archive, thus no further dependencies need to be installed.
• GHDL's bin directory will be added to PATH.

On Windows (native)

• Download GHDL asset from https://github.com/ghdl/ghdl/releases as *.zip into install-directory.
• The archive is extracted into the same directory.
• All dependencies are contained within the archive, thus no further dependencies need to be installed.
• GHDL's bin directory will be added to PATH.

On Windows + MSYS2

• Download GHDL asset from https://github.com/ghdl/ghdl/releases as *.pkg.tar.zst installation package for pacman.
• Install this package.
• Further dependencies get automatically installed by pacman, as listed as dependencies in the package.
• No need to modify PATH, because GHDL got installed into the MSYS2 system.

Contributors

• Patrick Lehmann (Maintainer)
• and more...

Credits

This GitHub Action replaces setup-ghdl-ci, a Javascript Action developed by Unai Martinez-Corral, with a composite action using simples instructions (curl, tar, apt-get) written in Bash or Powershell.

License

This GitHub Composite Action (source code) licensed under The MIT License.

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SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT