Will my designs created in an older version of Active-HDL work in the new Active-HDL?

NOTE: In the provided answer it is assumed that you have upgraded your Active-HDL to the newer version and now want to bring your legacy project current.

The format of design libraries may change between subsequent releases of Active-HDL. Changes to the library format are frequently caused by performance optimizations. Libraries and designs created with an earlier version of a compiler have to be updated before they can be used with a newer release of Active-HDL.

If you try using libraries that are no longer compatible with the current version of Active-HDL, the elaboration of the design will fail. Following error messages will appear indicating that the libraries were created by an older version of the Active-HDL compiler:

ELBREAD: Warning: Files created by the old version of the compiler found. ELBREAD: Error: Library 'work' has incompatible format. Recompile all library units. ELBREAD: Error: Elaboration process completed with errors.

Before using such a design in a newer version of Active-HDL you need to update the content of all libraries associated with this design. This can be done in two ways.

Recompiling both your design library and external libraries if your design uses any, from source files.
Using the refresh functionality in the VHDL/Verilog compiler. Refreshing library contents is more convenient than recompiling the library from sources since access to the source files is not required.

To refresh the library contents, use the Refresh Library option available in the pop-up menu in the Library Manager window when you highlight that library. The other choice to refresh the library is to run the following commands in the console window:

-- VHDL
acom -refresh <library_name>
// Verilog
alog -refresh <library_name>

The refresh functionality has been available since Active-HDL 6.2, i.e. the libraries compiled with that version and up can be refreshed in the subsequent releases of Active-HDL.

NOTE: External vendor libraries can also be updated by going to ALDEC's support website and downloading and installing those already pre-compiled latest version of vendor libraries.