Chisel Project Versioning

Chisel follows Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. Project versions are of the form MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. An incremented MAJOR version means there may be backwards incompatible changes (typically after an appropriate deprecation schedule). An incrementaled MINOR version means there are changes in functionality (new APIs) in a backwards compatible manner. Importantly, Chisel maintains binary compatibility between minor versions of the same major version. For example, a project compiled against Chisel 5.0.0 can be used with future Chisel versions 5.1.0 or 5.100.2. An incremented PATCH version means there are backwards compatible bug fixes.

Firtool Version

Starting with Chisel v3.6, Chisel uses firtool (part of the LLVM CIRCT project) to generate Verilog. Each version of Chisel is released against a specific version of firtool as specified in the following tables:

Releases

Chisel Version	Firtool Version
6.3.0	1.62.0
6.2.0	1.62.0
6.1.0	1.62.0
6.0.0	1.62.0
5.2.0	1.43.0
5.1.0	1.43.0
5.0.0	1.40.0
3.6.0	1.37.0

Pre-releases

Chisel Version	Firtool Version
7.0.0-M1	1.66.0
6.0.0-RC2	1.62.0
6.0.0-RC1	1.61.0
6.0.0-M3	1.52.0
6.0.0-M2	1.43.0
6.0.0-M1	1.40.0
5.0.0-RC2	1.40.0
5.0.0-RC1	1.38.0
5.0.0-M2	1.36.0
5.0.0-M1	1.31.0
3.6.0-RC3	1.37.0
3.6.0-RC2	1.31.0
3.6.0-RC1	1.30.0

Old Chisel versions (3.0 - 3.6)

As of Chisel 5.0.0, this and following sections no longer apply.

Prior to the relese of Chisel 5.0.0, Chisel and related projects followed a versioning scheme similar to PVP. Project versions were of the form A.B.C where A.B specifies the Major version and C specifies the Minor version. Projects maintain binary compatibility between minor versions of the same major version.

Compatible Versions (Chisel 3.0 - 3.6)

Historically, various Chisel-related projects were distributed across multiple projects each with their own versioning.

Please use the following table to determine which versions of the related projects are compatible. In particular, versions of projects in this table were compiled against the version of any dependencies listed in the same row. For example, chisel-iotesters version 1.4 was compiled against chisel3 version 3.3.

chisel3	chiseltest	chisel-iotesters3	firrtl	treadle	diagrammer	firrtl-interpreter2
3.6	0.6	-	1.6	1.6	1.6	-
3.5	0.54	2.55	1.5	1.54	1.54	-
3.4	0.3	1.5	1.4	1.3	1.3	1.4
3.3	0.2	1.4	1.3	1.2	1.2	1.3
3.2	0.11	1.3	1.2	1.1	1.1	1.2
3.1	-	1.2	1.1	1.0	1.0	1.1
3.0	-	1.1	1.0	-	-	1.0

¹ chiseltest 0.1 was published under artifact name chisel-testers2 (0.2 was published under both artifact names)
² Replaced by Treadle, in maintenance mode only since version 1.1, final version is 1.4
³ Replaced by chiseltest, final version is 2.5
⁴ chiseltest, treadle, and diagrammer skipped X.4 to have a consistent major version with Chisel
⁵ chisel-iotesters skipped from 1.5 to 2.5 to have a consistent major version with Chisel