Triage Issue

Triage OpenROAD Issue

You are triaging OpenROAD issue $ARGUMENTS.

1. Fetch issue details

gh issue view $ARGUMENTS --repo The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD \
  --json title,body,labels,state,comments

Look for:

• Error string (e.g. GPL-0305, GPL-0307, DRT-XXXX)
• Attached tarball URL (from make *_issue)
• OpenROAD version the bug was reported against

2. Download and extract artifact

Download any .tar.gz attached to the issue body or comments. Extract into a working directory:

mkdir -p /tmp/triage-$ARGUMENTS
cd /tmp/triage-$ARGUMENTS
tar xzf <downloaded-tarball>
cd <extracted-dir>

3. Fix the run script

The run-me-*.sh scripts from make *_issue often need two fixes:

# Add set -e to exit on error
sed -i '2i set -e' run-me-*.sh

# Add -exit so openroad exits after the tcl script
sed -i 's/openroad -no_init/openroad -exit -no_init/g' run-me-*.sh
sed -i 's/openroad -no_splash/openroad -exit -no_splash/g' run-me-*.sh

4. Build OpenROAD

Build from the OpenROAD source tree:

cd <path-to>/OpenROAD
bazelisk build :openroad

The binary is at bazel-bin/openroad. Export it:

export OPENROAD_EXE=$(pwd)/bazel-bin/openroad

5. Reproduce the bug

Run the step command and confirm the error string appears:

cd /tmp/triage-$ARGUMENTS/<extracted-dir>
./run-me-*.sh 2>&1 | tee reproduce.log
grep -c "<error-string>" reproduce.log

If the bug does NOT reproduce with the latest OpenROAD, report this on the issue -- the bug may have been fixed.

6. Run whittle.py

python3 <path-to>/OpenROAD/etc/whittle.py \
  --error_string "<error-string>" \
  --base_db_path <path-to>.odb \
  --use_stdout --exit_early_on_error \
  --step "./run-me-*.sh" \
  --persistence 3 --multiplier 2

Monitoring progress

Watch the [whittle] lines. Key things to check:

• ETA growing? The design may be too large for the current persistence level. Try --persistence 1 for a coarse first pass.
• .odb size not shrinking? The error may depend on most of the design. Try increasing --multiplier.
• Step timeout too long? Use --timeout 300 to cap each step at 5 minutes.
• After 5 minutes of a step, whittle.py shows the tail of the step's log so you can see what it is doing.

When to abort

• If after 20+ steps the .odb size has not changed, abort and try different parameters.
• If the step itself takes >10 minutes, consider whether the error string is specific enough (avoid generic strings like "ERROR").

7. Upload results

Create a new tarball with the whittled .odb:

cp whittle_base_result_*.odb <original-odb-path>
tar czf whittled-$ARGUMENTS.tar.gz <extracted-dir>/

Comment on the issue with before/after stats:

gh issue comment $ARGUMENTS --repo The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD \
  --body "Whittled test case: original NNN insts -> MMM insts, \
.odb size: XXX MB -> YYY MB. Attached whittled tarball."

Upload the tarball to the issue comment via the GitHub web UI (gh CLI does not support file attachments on comments).