Vivado

Raised as a usability problem by 27 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2016–2026), in 23 threads.

People raised many different problems with Vivado, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 29 complaints

Transceiver names differ between block diagram (quad bank numbers) and test results (X0Y1 style), requiring a pinout lookup2026-10-25
Software is bloated and slow to use2026-05-28
Synthesis fails with a mysterious bug that is impossible to understand2026-05-26
Running the installer with --help opens an X window, so batch mode needs a headless X2026-05-24
Workflow forces clicking through the GUI, with state stored in unversionable project files2025-12-23
Adding or editing a Verilog file stalls the tool for around 40 minutes2025-09-23
AXI subordinate example acts as a barrier to getting started2024-07-16
Tools are so complicated that a wrong button click causes late failures2023-11-28
Tools are so complicated that clicking a button wrong causes late failures2023-11-27
Vendor IDE is a terrible Eclipse fork that users must endure2023-02-06
Making a project requires jumping through many wizard forms and produces a broken project2023-02-06
Synthesis produces thousands of warnings, so people ignore them and problems follow2021-11-05
Vivado and SDK are complex, large Java tools that hide simple command-line programs2021-04-08
Settings not exposed in GUI or broken there, forcing manual tcl scripting2021-04-08
Unclear which generated files are needed to regenerate the block design from a clean clone2021-02-25
Unclear which project files are user input needed to rebuild, hard to version control2020-10-28
Xilinx design software has degraded, getting cryptic, buggy and hard to work with2020-10-09
Vivado is a 25GB install and not entirely beginner-friendly2020-09-19
IP must go through complicated GUI wizards, blocking scripting and preferred editors2020-07-24
Vivado IDE is bloated and painful to use, so users fall back to command line2020-07-23
Interface is unintuitive, slow, and lacks basic editing features2020-07-17
Interns get stuck for weeks; creating a hello world project is impossible to figure out2020-07-17
Takes days for an experienced developer to figure out how to create a project2020-04-13
Vivado is very slow to use no matter what device or setup2020-01-08
Even with an empty design the tool feels sluggish2019-10-04
Spent four hours getting a simulation to run after an upgrade2018-09-24
Horrible Eclipse-based import tool can't be automated, manual FSBL edits get wiped out2018-06-09
GUI is terrible to use, making HDL coding and workflow painful2018-06-09
Synthesis fails after 20 minutes on errors detectable at the start; memory balloons and swaps2016-04-07