Incorrect File Timestamps Affecting Lattice Radiant (WinRAR / Archive Extraction)

Incorrect File Timestamps Affecting Lattice Radiant (WinRAR / Archive Extraction)

When a Radiant project is delivered as a compressed archive (ZIP, RAR, etc.) and extracted with a tool that does not preserve original file timestamps or applies a future date to the extracted files, Radiant can misread the design state. Because Radiant relies on file modification times to determine whether each stage (Synthesis, Map, Place & Route) is up to date, files dated in the future cause the tool to assume the design has not yet been processed.

Some symptoms of this bug include:

  1. Synthesis, Map, and Place & Route all complete successfully (logs confirm completion), but the design status in Radiant immediately reverts to "unprocessed" — no green status indicators.
  2. You cannot load the design into Power Calculator or other downstream tools that require a processed design.
  3. The behavior persists even when you re-run individual stages.
  4. On inspection, some project files (e.g., `.sdc`, `.sv`, and other source files) have modification dates set in the future (for example, a year of 2035).
Known file extractors with this issue:
  1. built-in Windows 11 & 10 extractor
  2. built-in Ubuntu "Archive Manager" (GNOME GUI archive tool)
  3. WinRAR

To fix this, the source file timestamps must be corrected so they reflect the current system time (or an earlier time), then re-run the design flow. You may:

  1. Re-save / re-stamp the files to the current machine time. Resetting the modification time on all project files to the current date resolves the misinterpretation. A short script (for example, a Python script that walks the project directory and sets each file's mtime to the current or an older date) handles this cleanly across many files.
  2. Re-extract using a tool that preserves correct timestamps. Use an extraction utility (or setting) that retains the archive's original timestamps rather than assigning future dates. For example, use 7zip app to extract files.

After correcting the timestamps, re-run Synthesis through Place & Route; the design status should now persist, and Power Calculator and other downstream tools will load the design correctly.