Getting started¶

gdscheck is a standalone geometry-only DRC engine: it reads a GDSII layout and a YAML rule deck, and writes a KLayout-compatible .lyrdb marker database. It has no dependency on KLayout, Magic or a foundry toolchain at runtime.

Installation¶

Requires a recent Rust toolchain (edition 2024).

cargo install gdscheck

This installs the gdscheck binary — the DRC engine.

Local build from source¶

To build from a checkout instead (e.g. to work on gdscheck itself):

cargo build --release

This produces gdscheck in target/release/. Building with the dev-tools feature also produces gen-testdata, which regenerates the per-rule test-pattern GDS files used by the integration test suite (see Contributing):

cargo build --release --features dev-tools --bin gen-testdata

Running DRC¶

gdscheck run \
    --input   <layout.gds[.gz]> \
    --process ihp-sg13g2 \
    --suite   main \
    --topcell <top-cell-name> \
    --report  report.lyrdb

Input GDS may be plain or gzip-compressed (detected from the magic bytes, not the file extension). Pass exactly one of --suite <name> (a curated rule selection) or --deck <name[,name...]> (one or more per-layer decks) — the two are mutually exclusive.

Other subcommands inspect a PDK without running a check:

gdscheck list-decks  --process ihp-sg13g2
gdscheck list-suites --process ihp-sg13g2
gdscheck show-deck   --process ihp-sg13g2 --deck metal1

show-deck prints every rule in a deck (id, check, layers, value, params) — useful for confirming exactly what a suite pulls in before running it on a real layout.

Decks and suites¶

A deck is a YAML file of rules for one PDK subsystem (e.g. metal2.yml, cont.yml). A suite is a named, curated selection of rules imported from one or more decks — e.g. main (everything) or precheck (a fast subset) — without duplicating rule definitions. Suites are listed under a PDK’s suites: section and selected with --suite; decks are selected directly with --deck.

See PDK authoring guide for the full deck/suite YAML format.

Selecting the process¶

--process accepts either an embedded PDK name (ihp-sg13g2, ihp-sg13cmos5l — built into the binary, no external files needed) or a filesystem path to a pdk.yml for an out-of-tree or custom PDK. See Supported PDKs for the bundled PDKs and PDK authoring guide for writing your own.

Writing reports¶

Pass --report <path>.lyrdb to write a KLayout report database alongside the console summary. Without --report, violations are still printed to stdout (or the run reports DRC clean.) but nothing is written to disk. See Reports and markers for the file format and how markers map to rule violations.

By default the console prints only a per-rule violation count; pass --verbose (or -v) to print every individual violation’s message. The .lyrdb report, when requested, always contains full per-violation detail regardless of --verbose.

Connectivity and net-aware checks¶

A handful of checks are net-aware — they need to know which shapes are electrically the same net (antenna-ratio rules, gate-connected protection-diode sizing). For these, gdscheck extracts nets from geometry alone, driven by the PDK’s declared connectivity: graph (which connector layers — vias, contacts — bridge which conductor layers). Net extraction is lazy: it only runs if the deck actually contains a net-aware check, so a purely geometric run (e.g. a single metal deck) never pays for it.

Pass --no-connectivity to disable it explicitly; net-aware checks are then skipped with a message instead of running (geometry-only checks are unaffected). Use this to get a fast geometry-only pass, or when a design’s connect graph doesn’t resolve cleanly.

Command-line reference¶

`run`¶

Option	Meaning
`-i, --input`	Input GDS file (plain or `.gz`).
`-p, --process`	PDK process name (embedded) or a path to a `pdk.yml`.
`-d, --deck`	Per-layer deck(s), comma-separated and/or repeated. Mutually exclusive with `--suite`.
`-s, --suite`	A curated rule selection. Mutually exclusive with `--deck`.
`-t, --topcell`	Name of the top cell to flatten and check.
`-r, --report`	Optional output `.lyrdb` report path.
`--threads`	Worker threads (`0` = all logical cores, the default).
`--no-connectivity`	Disable net extraction; net-aware checks are skipped.
`-v, --verbose`	Print every violation’s message, not just per-rule counts.

`list-decks` / `list-suites`¶

Take only -p, --process.

`show-deck`¶

Takes -p, --process and -d, --deck (the deck to print).