Getting started without hardware

You can contribute to PulsePins meaningfully without owning a board.

Best entry points

  • documentation in docs/ and top-level README* files
  • Python bindings in python/
  • C++ sequence handling and command-line behavior in c++/
  • RTL simulation and test benches in ip/

Useful commands

Build the documentation site:

make -C docs site

Build and test the Python bindings on a host machine:

make -C python build
make -C python test-host

This host-side path is useful for syntax/import/API validation, but it intentionally skips tests marked as hardware-only. It is not a supported replacement for building the production Python modules on the DE10-Nano. True Python cross-compilation is not currently supported.

Run HDL test benches:

make -C ip test

Good first contributions

  • improve docs clarity
  • add recipes and examples
  • improve parser validation
  • add simulation tests
  • improve contributor onboarding

Areas to treat carefully

Without hardware, avoid making strong claims about:

  • timing accuracy
  • current clocking behavior on the board
  • exact runtime behavior of deployment scripts on the target image
  • measured outputs from ppfreq, ppts, pptemp, and related tools

For those cases, document assumptions and leave room for later hardware verification.