Silice runs smoothly under Windows using MSYS2 / MinGW64. MSYS2 is great to use Linux-style tools under Windows, and installs a self-contained environment easy to later uninstall.
Please download and install MSYS2 (msys2-x86_64) from https://www.msys2.org/ Be sure to follow the instructions on the download page to update your MSYS2 install to latest.
From there, open a MinGW64 prompt, launching c:\msys64\mingw64.exe (assuming MSYS2 is
installed in its default location). Be sure to use MinGW64, not 32, nor a MSYS prompt.
The prompt should look like this (note the MinGW64 label in purple):
Then, from the prompt, enter the Silice directory and type: ./get_started_mingw64.sh.
Note: The script downloads necessary MinGW packages, compiles and installs Silice using standard paths (
/usr/local/binand/usr/local/shared/silice) as well as downloads and sets up the oss-cad-suite FPGA toolchain in/usr/local/shared/silice, adding a line in~/.bashrcto set environment variables.
Open a new MinGW64 prompt to start using Silice.
For details please refer to the script source code.
To program with iceprog and openFPGAloader under Windows, you may have to use the Zadig USB tool to swap the driver. To do this, connect the board, launch Zadig, select the board from the drop-down menu (interface 0), and change the driver for 'WinUSB' (select it on the right side). Click replace, wait, disconnect the board, put it back, should be working now. I've done this several times without issues. If it still does not work, verify the USB port is not a hub (some USB ports on computer fronts are) and try again from a native USB port on your motherboard.
Time to run a few tests and start having fun!