EMACS VHDL mode

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Hi

I stumbled upon EMACS VHDL mode, and it's looks like a very powerful tool. Its documentation however, is less then that. especially for someone like me who has used MS tools all his life...

Can anyone direct me to a good book, tutorial, forum or anything else that might be helpful?

Thanks.

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You might also look at sigasi's vhdl editor (http://www.sigasi.com/). Unfortunately the 'full' version it isn't free, but the 'Starter' version is and allows you to do small designs with all features enabled. It makes it a perfect editor for building sub-modules. I am using it at the moment to develop a small sequencer, which is about 1750 lines over 5 modules in total.

I had a look at Sigasi, and my personal impression is that it a professional Emacs user will achieve a higher productivity from Emacs, than an experienced Sigasi user.

the problem is becoming professional with Emacs....

That's before mentioning the open source vs. propriety issue.

check out notepad++

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

it has a nice VHDL mode and the learning curve is way lower than emacs.

Also the easy column mode editing is really handy for VHDL.

(connecting ports and signals, aligning cases in FSMs, etc).

This is done by holding down alt and selecting the region of interest.

You can then type, use delete or backspace, column-wise cut and paste, etc.

The only thing I like better about emacs is the auto VHDL code beautify.

Other than that notepad++ is way easier to use.

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I had a look at Sigasi, and my personal impression is that it a professional Emacs user will achieve a higher productivity from Emacs, than an experienced Sigasi user.

the problem is becoming professional with Emacs....

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Sigasi HDT 2.0?

They show this

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Sigasi Starter Edition: Forever Free

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on their web-site. (And I tend to trust my fellow-countrymen).

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That's before mentioning the open source vs. propriety issue.

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This is totally moat. We're both using Altera designs Tools. What could ever be more proprietary?

I use emacs as my only editor for HDL. Now I use verilog, but the VHDL mode is great as well. The learning curve on emacs is kinda steep, but once you get there you will be very fast and be able to customize it in any way you would like. There are groups on google like gnu.emacs.help , comp.emacs that might be of help. Sure there are manuals and tutorials on http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ but you will find most of the information just searching around on the net.

Boris

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check out notepad++

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

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I'm using NP++ as my main text editor, but the only VHDL support I see, is keyword highlighter. Am I missing something? a plugin maybe?

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Sigasi HDT 2.0?

They show this on their web-site. (And I tend to trust my fellow-countrymen).

This is totally moat. We're both using Altera designs Tools. What could ever be more proprietary?

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the starter edition lacks some nice features, and who promises that version 3.0 will also be free?

please direct me to an open source FPGA project so I might consider leaving Altera.

I'm not an open source fanatic (as I said, I used to MS environment) , but when I have a choice between 2 smiler option, I'll take the always evolving, constantly reviewed, with cool features from actual users option.

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There are groups on google like gnu.emacs.help , comp.emacs that might be of help. Sure there are manuals and tutorials on http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ but you will find most of the information just searching around on the net.

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I'll have a look at the gnu.emacs.help group, because so far I didn't find anything really useful.

thanks to all of you!

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the starter edition lacks some nice features, and who promises that version 3.0 will also be free?

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The started version only blocks some of the nice things when the project grows over a limit (which is not that high, but enough to make reasonably sized sub-modules).

You may be right and version 3 may turn out to be no longer free. I'll just take my chances.

One thing also in favour of Sigasi HDT is that it runs on Eclipse, which is also used for the NIOS II IDE.

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please direct me to an open source FPGA project so I might consider leaving Altera.

I'm not an open source fanatic (as I said, I used to MS environment) , but when I have a choice between 2 smiler option, I'll take the always evolving, constantly reviewed, with cool features from actual users option.

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You will always need the proprietary vendor software to place and route.

I've always searched for and visited 'open source' FPGA projects and I have seen them all grind to a halt. As soon as the 'founder' gets a decent job (at Altera? :) ) the evolution stops ...

I'm looking for a text editor AND project "browser", so designing sub block in one tool and handling the project in another is awkward...

I'd be very surprised to if an open source FPGA existed out there... :)

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I'm looking for a text editor AND project "browser", so designing sub block in one tool and handling the project in another is awkward...

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I was planning (organising) to: develop sub-modules using a VHDL-editor (of choice) and ModelSim (Altera Edition of course). The top-project I will build using Qsys. Of course doing everything from within one IDE would be nicer, alas ...

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I'd be very surprised to if an open source FPGA existed out there... :)

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No real surprise, FPGA engineers are not that much interested in SW development and have enough fun in their dayjob, so they don't need to start a hobby-project?

even simpler: no company that develops FPGA devices will give away it's design.

no open source project can handle the NRE for an ASIC,.;