That said, functionally speaking the extension is 90% of the way there. Synthesis, PnR, simulation, visualization and more all work for ECP5 & iCE40 FPGAs, and to limited extent some others as well. We have a few more features that we're working on, but a very solid basis already exists.
For technical reasons we have a bit of a deadline on finishing the project, which is likely in around ~6-7 months. So by then we intend to have a 1.0 release and very solid documentation out.
Unfortunately, past experiences I have are that a very small academic team = stay away, project will have too many rough edges.
I hope your experience goes better. Tip: A revenue stream gives you something to work with. Failing that, carefully document your whole architecture so contributors will be willing to help.
## Irrelevant Complaining
Just ran across this last year: good looking software, great concept, first half of features work great … enough to hook me, so when I finally found out the other half was bug ridden I stuck it out but ouch. Needless to say, no design document so even fixing stuff was a pain point.
Our intention has never been to build a full alternative to e.g. Quartus Prime or Vivado that suits everyone's needs. Our main intention is to show people that FPGA toolchains don't have to be so difficult to get started with, and that alternatives are possible. And yes, I agree, that absolutely means good documentation on several levels to allow other people to continue working on the project. Good thing that's part of our mission, so it will be done; just takes a little bit of time ;)