VHDL Editors (esp. V3S)

Guest
As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many people will looking for better alternatives.

The usual suspects will be Emacs (with VHDL mode) and Sigasi.

For me personally, I never really liked Emacs and found Sigasi just a bit too expensive.

So some time ago I came across V3S from www.vide-software.at. It is a quite powerful and fair priced VHDL plug-in for Visual Studio (Stand-alone version with Visual Studio redistributable package also available). I could also watch the progress over the last few months and I really like it.

The only drawback is the missing Linux support. However, there appears to be a Linux version of "Visual Studio Code". I have not checked yet if this works together with the plug-in. Maybe someone else has?

Regards,

Thomas

P.S.: I am in no way related to V3S, just a happy user. I want to sell you EEBlasters, JPEG encoders and cameras at www.entner-electronics.com, however ;-)
 
On Sat, 21 Jan 2017 16:36:43 -0800, thomas.entner99 wrote:

As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many
people will looking for better alternatives.

The usual suspects will be Emacs (with VHDL mode) and Sigasi.

For me personally, I never really liked Emacs and found Sigasi just a
bit too expensive.

So some time ago I came across V3S from www.vide-software.at. It is a
quite powerful and fair priced VHDL plug-in for Visual Studio
(Stand-alone version with Visual Studio redistributable package also
available). I could also watch the progress over the last few months and
I really like it.

The only drawback is the missing Linux support. However, there appears
to be a Linux version of "Visual Studio Code". I have not checked yet if
this works together with the plug-in. Maybe someone else has?

Regards,

Thomas

P.S.: I am in no way related to V3S, just a happy user. I want to sell
you EEBlasters, JPEG encoders and cameras at www.entner-electronics.com,
however ;-)
Click to expand...

Try Eclipse. They cover a huge number of languages. A nice thing for me
is that much of the UI is standard Eclipse, with nice extensions for
language-awareness built in.

I'm currently using it for C/C++ development, html, and LaTeX -- and I
have done Java with it in the past.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

I'm looking for work -- see my website!
 
I suppose. What I remember of colleagues not using Emacs were using
Ultraedit in Windows or Nedit in Linux.
Click to expand...

But I think they do not go much beyond syntax highlighting for VHDL. Sigasi and V3S go much further, e.g. with automatic instance generation and "live" error checking.

@Tim: Do you have any specific Eclipse plug-ins in mind? I think they are all also just syntax highlighting. (For Verilog there is VEditor, but I think it has only limited VHDL support, too.) But it is some time ago since I checked last.
 
On Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 7:36:46 PM UTC-5, thomas....@gmail.com wrote:
As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many people will looking for better alternatives.

The usual suspects will be Emacs (with VHDL mode) and Sigasi.

For me personally, I never really liked Emacs and found Sigasi just a bit too expensive.

So some time ago I came across V3S from www.vide-software.at. It is a quite powerful and fair priced VHDL plug-in for Visual Studio (Stand-alone version with Visual Studio redistributable package also available). I could also watch the progress over the last few months and I really like it.

The only drawback is the missing Linux support. However, there appears to be a Linux version of "Visual Studio Code". I have not checked yet if this works together with the plug-in. Maybe someone else has?

Regards,

Thomas

P.S.: I am in no way related to V3S, just a happy user. I want to sell you EEBlasters, JPEG encoders and cameras at www.entner-electronics.com, however ;-)
Click to expand...

As far as "editors" go, take your pick. I've used Emacs almost exclusively for ~15 years. Once you're proficient with something, it's difficult to switch. I use it on Windows and Linux with no problems. It does take a while to set it up the way you like it, but once you learn the commands it's really nice.

Other editors used by my colleagues (some that I've tried) include: Vim, gVim, neoVim, Atom, Sublime Text, Notepad++, and SlickEdit.

One of the features I use a lot is Rectangle mode in Emacs. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RectangleCommands

I haven't found a good, easy way to do the same thing in any of the other editors and that alone is a primary reason for sticking with Emacs.
 
thomas.entner99@gmail.com writes:

As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many
people will looking for better alternatives.
Click to expand...

I suppose. What I remember of colleagues not using Emacs were using
Ultraedit in Windows or Nedit in Linux.

Others have used something with no language support (KWrite in Linux,
Sun's Textedit, also Windows Notepad, even "Edit" in MS-DOS.)
 
On 1/25/2017 7:14 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
thomas.entner99@gmail.com writes:

As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many
people will looking for better alternatives.

I suppose. What I remember of colleagues not using Emacs were using
Ultraedit in Windows or Nedit in Linux.

Others have used something with no language support (KWrite in Linux,
Sun's Textedit, also Windows Notepad, even "Edit" in MS-DOS.)
Click to expand...

I'm afraid I still use Codewright, which is a great tool still. But
it's not under Linux. If I ever get a Linux computer up and running I
keep saying I will switch to EMACS. But when I've looked at it under
Windows it seems crude and complicated. I'm told once you get up the
learning curve it is great, or grate.. pick one.

In Codewright I have several string recognizers to allow me to generate
any one from any other, entity declaration, component instantiation,
signals declarations. Not so much pain until I start altering them.

--

Rick C
 
On 01/25/2017 07:32 AM, kkoorndyk wrote:
On Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 7:36:46 PM UTC-5, thomas....@gmail.com wrote:
As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many people will looking for better alternatives.

The usual suspects will be Emacs (with VHDL mode) and Sigasi.

For me personally, I never really liked Emacs and found Sigasi just a bit too expensive.

So some time ago I came across V3S from www.vide-software.at. It is a quite powerful and fair priced VHDL plug-in for Visual Studio (Stand-alone version with Visual Studio redistributable package also available). I could also watch the progress over the last few months and I really like it.

The only drawback is the missing Linux support. However, there appears to be a Linux version of "Visual Studio Code". I have not checked yet if this works together with the plug-in. Maybe someone else has?

Regards,

Thomas

P.S.: I am in no way related to V3S, just a happy user. I want to sell you EEBlasters, JPEG encoders and cameras at www.entner-electronics.com, however ;-)

As far as "editors" go, take your pick. I've used Emacs almost exclusively for ~15 years. Once you're proficient with something, it's difficult to switch. I use it on Windows and Linux with no problems. It does take a while to set it up the way you like it, but once you learn the commands it's really nice.

Other editors used by my colleagues (some that I've tried) include: Vim, gVim, neoVim, Atom, Sublime Text, Notepad++, and SlickEdit.

One of the features I use a lot is Rectangle mode in Emacs. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RectangleCommands

I haven't found a good, easy way to do the same thing in any of the other editors and that alone is a primary reason for sticking with Emacs.
Click to expand...

I know that Notepad++ (Windows) and Geany (my personal choice,
cross-platform) both support column selection, which I think is pretty
equivalent to Rectangle mode for most code sorts of tasks. They're both
based around Scintilla as a backend; I'm assuming the support goes all
the way back to that.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order. See above to fix.
 
> One of the features I use a lot is Rectangle mode in Emacs. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RectangleCommands

I think most reasonable editors support this, mostly by either holding ALT or CTRL pressed during makeing a selection with the mouse-pointer. In Eclipse it is a seperate mode, toggled with ALT-SHIFT-A, IIRC.

BTW: I think most mentioned editors will be good for programming and editing, but for VHDL coding they cannot keep up with V3S or (the more expensive) Sigasi. Check out the videos on the respective home-pages...
 
On 1/25/2017 10:32 AM, kkoorndyk wrote:
On Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 7:36:46 PM UTC-5, thomas....@gmail.com wrote:
As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many people will looking for better alternatives.

The usual suspects will be Emacs (with VHDL mode) and Sigasi.

For me personally, I never really liked Emacs and found Sigasi just a bit too expensive.

So some time ago I came across V3S from www.vide-software.at. It is a quite powerful and fair priced VHDL plug-in for Visual Studio (Stand-alone version with Visual Studio redistributable package also available). I could also watch the progress over the last few months and I really like it.

The only drawback is the missing Linux support. However, there appears to be a Linux version of "Visual Studio Code". I have not checked yet if this works together with the plug-in. Maybe someone else has?

Regards,

Thomas

P.S.: I am in no way related to V3S, just a happy user. I want to sell you EEBlasters, JPEG encoders and cameras at www.entner-electronics.com, however ;-)

As far as "editors" go, take your pick. I've used Emacs almost exclusively for ~15 years. Once you're proficient with something, it's difficult to switch. I use it on Windows and Linux with no problems. It does take a while to set it up the way you like it, but once you learn the commands it's really nice.

Other editors used by my colleagues (some that I've tried) include: Vim, gVim, neoVim, Atom, Sublime Text, Notepad++, and SlickEdit.

One of the features I use a lot is Rectangle mode in Emacs. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RectangleCommands

I haven't found a good, easy way to do the same thing in any of the other editors and that alone is a primary reason for sticking with Emacs.
Click to expand...

The description of rectangle mode is a bit complex, how do you get an
odd number of characters with an even number of lines? But Codewright
has what I think that mode does. They call it block mode and you can
cut, copy and paste any rectangular region to anywhere else.

I just realized that one of the "oddities" of Codewright has to do with
the way they handle the blank spaces with no characters. If you
position the cursor on a line where no chars are typed and type
anything, it inserts spaces (or tabs and spaces) ahead of the cursor
from the last char on the line. This would be important when using
block mode in many instances. It's a bit of a pain in that moving the
cursor down does not position at the end of the line, rather it just
moves down one. You have to press the "end" key to go to the end of the
line even when it is to the left. :(

--

Rick C
 
thomas.entner99@gmail.com writes:

I suppose. What I remember of colleagues not using Emacs were using
Ultraedit in Windows or Nedit in Linux.


But I think they do not go much beyond syntax highlighting for
VHDL. Sigasi and V3S go much further, e.g. with automatic instance
generation and "live" error checking.
Click to expand...

It's possible, I'm not sure if I've ever used Nedit or Ultraedit. But
maybe the lack of features is the point? I feel at least some of those
colleagues didn't want advanced features in their editor and I suppose
also weren't bothered by the monkey work that means with VHDL.

I had a Sigasi evaluation license some years ago but in the end the
problem was I don't really like Eclipse. I guess Sigasi is still
Eclipse, right?

OTOH, I liked Sigasi's integration support for Quartus project files but
that had more to do with Quartus's clunkiness.
 
I had a Sigasi evaluation license some years ago but in the end the
problem was I don't really like Eclipse. I guess Sigasi is still
Eclipse, right?

Yes, Sigasi is Eclipse based.
Click to expand...

V3S is Visual Studio based.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. I guess it is - like the whole editor topic - a question of personal preferences. (I for my part e.g. do NOT like the "monkey work" and also like syntax errors to be flagged before compilation process, which is supported by both...)

Regards,

Thomas

www.entner-electronics.com - Home of EEBlaster and JPEG-Codec
 
thomas.entner99@gmail.com wrote:
As X and A's integrated editors are more or less limited, I guess many people will looking for better alternatives.

The usual suspects will be Emacs (with VHDL mode) and Sigasi.

For me personally, I never really liked Emacs and found Sigasi just a bit too expensive.

So some time ago I came across V3S from www.vide-software.at. It is a quite powerful and fair priced VHDL plug-in for Visual Studio (Stand-alone version with Visual Studio redistributable package also available). I could also watch the progress over the last few months and I really like it.

The only drawback is the missing Linux support. However, there appears to be a Linux version of "Visual Studio Code". I have not checked yet if this works together with the plug-in. Maybe someone else has?

Regards,

Thomas

P.S.: I am in no way related to V3S, just a happy user. I want to sell you EEBlasters, JPEG encoders and cameras at www.entner-electronics.com, however ;-)
Click to expand...

I do almost all of my work in Verilog, but I do have comments
about editors in general.

I gave up on using Xilinx built-in editors after the first major
update. For no apparent reason, they completely changed the user
interface. Im my opinion, the best editor is the one you're most
familiar with. You spend a lot of time discovering the easiest way
to do each editing task. So it makes no sense to depend on an
editor that changes everything you've learned with each major
software update.

I've been using Med for some time now. Unfortunately it doesn't
seem to be maintained anymore, but I'm happy with the functionality
of the old version I'm using. It didn't come with a Verilog language
template, but gave me the option of making my own. It has some
interesting capabilities like column-selection and paste being
separate things. That is, regardless of how you copy or cut a
piece of text, it can be pasted as a column (rectangular selection)
or normally. So you can copy a rectangular selection and paste it
in line, or vice versa. Indenting is rather crude, but good enough
for my work.

I actually tried Sigasi's editor briefly, but found it lacking some
of the features I was used to, and I wasn't so interested in the
project management portion since I generally work from the Xilinx
GUI. At this point, I'm not sure which feature I missed, since it's
been a while since I tried it. What I was hoping to find (in any
editor) was the ability to automatically re-indent code based on
the language structure. This is something that has been in C
editors for a long time. I seem to recall the operation called
"prettify," as in to make the source look pretty. I like my code
in a particular indenting style, and find it easier to read other
peoples code after I've re-styled it to match my preferences.

--
Gabor
 
I do almost all of my work in Verilog, but I do have comments
about editors in general.

I actually tried Sigasi's editor briefly, but found it lacking some
of the features I was used to, and I wasn't so interested in the
project management portion since I generally work from the Xilinx
GUI.
Click to expand...

The last time I checked, both Sigasi and V3S had quite limited Verilog support, I think in the moment they are really VHDL editors, with some basic Verilog support if you need to edit a Verilog file here and then...

I did a Verilog project only once, about 2 years ago, and at that time VEditor worked the best for me by far, at least from the free options (it was also recommended to me by the respective customer, but I first tried some different approaches). It flagged a lot of issues in the source code that are not detected by a Verilog compiler and saved me a lot of time looking for stupid bugs. (In contrast, VHDL editors flag errors, that would be detected by the compiler... But this is a different topic ;-)

Regards,

Thomas

www.entner-electronics.com - Home of EEBlaster and JPEG Codec
 
I have installed V3S ...

When I instantiate a component in the following manner:

i_my: entity work.sub

V3S complains that sub is unknown ...

How can I suppress that behavior? (Ok, apart from using a component declaration...)

Noro
 
Am Donnerstag, 2. Februar 2017 09:36:34 UTC+1 schrieb noreeli....@gmail.com:
I have installed V3S ...

When I instantiate a component in the following manner:

i_my: entity work.sub

V3S complains that sub is unknown ...

How can I suppress that behavior? (Ok, apart from using a component declaration...)

Noro
Click to expand...

<sub> must be defined somewhere in the project (either another entity, or in a library/package) -> add that file to the project

Thomas
 
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