Getting Started

Get RHDL installed on your system. This guide covers the minimum setup needed to design, simulate, and export your first hardware circuit.

Prerequisites

Ruby 3.1 or later
Bundler gem for dependency management
Git for version control

Install RHDL

gem install rhdl

Or add it to your project’s Gemfile:

gem 'rhdl'

Then run:

bundle install

Verify the Installation

rhdl --help

You should see the available commands:

Command	Description
`tui`	Launch interactive TUI debugger
`diagram`	Generate circuit diagrams
`export`	Export components to Verilog
`gates`	Gate-level synthesis
`apple2`	Apple II emulator and ROM tools

Quick Smoke Test

Create a simple AND gate and simulate it in IRB:

require 'rhdl'
 
and_gate = RHDL::HDL::AndGate.new("my_and")
and_gate.set_input(:a0, 1)
and_gate.set_input(:a1, 1)
and_gate.propagate
puts and_gate.get_output(:y)  # => 1

List Available Components

RHDL ships with a full library of pre-built components. To see them all:

rhdl tui --list

This lists components across all categories — gates, sequential, arithmetic, combinational, memory, and CPU.

Next Steps

Development Environment Setup — configure your editor, toolchain, and project structure
Your First Circuit — build a working design from scratch

CIRCT

Explorer