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Transaction-Level Verilog support for Vim

The vim-tlv-mode plug-in adds support for Transaction-Level Verilog (TLV for short) to the [Vim text editor] vim. The plug-in is intended to provide everything needed to efficiently develop TLV code in Vim:

  • File type detection
  • Syntax highlighting (including an optional color scheme)
  • Automatic (smart) indentation
  • Automatic text folding
  • Checking for syntax errors (work in progress)

Each of the features outlined above is discussed in more detail below.

Please note that Transaction-Level Verilog is in the process of being launched as this document is written so I can't provide any public references yet, but stay tuned: As soon as TLV has been launched I will provide references here.

Install & first use

Please refer to the [installation instructions] howto-install available on GitHub. Once you've installed the plug-in try it out: Edit a *.tlv file and inspect the syntax highlighting in \TLV code blocks! You can also play around with the smart indentation to get a feel for how it works.

Features

File type detection

Transaction-Level Verilog files are detected in two complementary ways:

  1. Files with the *.tlv filename extension;
  2. Files whose first line consists of the mandatory file format line.

If either of the two conditions above is met the file type detection kicks in. What this basically means is that you should never have to manually activate the file type or syntax highlighting; it will be done for you automatically.

Syntax highlighting

The syntax highlighting mode differentiates between three types of code regions:

  1. The first type of region is marked at its start with the line \SV, these regions contain lines of [SystemVerilog] sv code that are passed through (unprocessed and uninterpreted) to the translated SystemVerilog file. These regions are highlighted using Vim's [SystemVerilog syntax highlighting support] sv_syntax (included in Vim's runtime distribution as the systemverilog file type).

  2. The second type of region is marked at its start with the line \TLV, these regions contain lines of Transaction-Level Verilog code. This is where the syntax highlighting for Transaction-Level Verilog code kicks in and where most of the syntax highlighting logic of vim-tlv-mode is concentrated.

  3. The third type of region is marked at its start with the line \SV_plus, these regions contain lines of SystemVerilog code with TLV signal references.

Syntax highlighting of M4 macros

The TLV processing chain runs M4 m4 as an independent preprocessor before any other processing takes place so M4 macros can be used anywhere (although they are intended to provide functionality for \TLV and \SV_plus regions). Because of this the vim-tlv-mode syntax script uses Vim's [M4 syntax highlighting support] m4_syntax to highlight M4 macros embedded in TLV files.

Recommended color scheme included

There is a recommended color scheme for editing Transaction-Level Verilog code and vim-tlv-mode contains a Vim color scheme script called (you guessed it :-) tlv that provides this recommended color scheme to Vim. Of course you're free to decide whether to use this color scheme or not, the choice is up to you. The syntax highlighting mode is intended to work well with other Vim color schemes as well.

The color scheme was created with [graphical Vim] gvim in mind because the recommended colors are not available in terminal Vim (because terminal Vim is limited to a fixed palette with a maximum of 256 colors). I may try to make the color scheme compatible with terminal Vim as well, but I'm not yet sure how well that will work.

To try out the color scheme you can use the following command:

:colorscheme tlv

If you like the color scheme you can add the command above to your [vimrc script] vimrc to make the choice permanent.

Automatic (smart) indentation

The vim-tlv-mode plug-in uses Vim's ['indentexpr'] indentexpr option to implement smart indentation (that understands TLV scope rules and knows to ignore line type characters) and automatically increases the indentation level as needed.

Automatic text folding

The vim-tlv-mode plug-in uses Vim's ['foldexpr'] foldexpr option to implement automatic text folding (that understands TLV scope rules and knows to ignore line type characters). This method of text folding is already a big improvement over indentation based folding (because that falls apart as soon as line type characters are introduced) but it's not perfect yet; I'd like to improve it further.

Checking for syntax errors

To compile TLV code you need the sandpiper compiler. When the vim-tlv-mode plug-in sees that you have the sandpiper compiler installed it will automatically run the compiler every time you save a TLV file. If the compiler reports syntax warnings or errors a [location-list-window] llw pops up to show you an overview of compiler messages. When you click on a line in the location list window you'll automatically jump to the line in the TLV file where the message was reported.

Setting it up

To get the automatic syntax checking working you need to have the sandpiper compiler installed on your $PATH. To set this up you create a symbolic link from a directory in your $PATH to the bin/sandpiper executable in the TLV compiler distribution (which also contains an m4 directory next to the bin directory). In order to use the TLV compiler the vim-tlv-mode plug-in needs to use the command line option -m4inc with the absolute pathname of the m4 directory. The symbolic link is used by the vim-tlv-mode plug-in to find the pathname of the m4 directory inside the TLV compiler distribution.

Status of this feature

Please note that this feature is still in development (not finished yet). It is working quite well already for plain TLV files but it needs more work for TLV files that involve significant M4 preprocessing (this breaks the file names and line numbers and I'm not yet sure how to match them up afterwards).

Contact

If you have questions, bug reports, suggestions, etc. the author can be contacted at peter@peterodding.com. The latest version is available at [peterodding.com/code/vim/tlv-mode] homepage and [github.com/xolox/vim-tlv-mode] github-tlv-mode. If you like the plug-in please vote for it on [Vim Online] vim-online.

License

This software is licensed under the [MIT license] mit.
© 2015 Peter Odding <peter@peterodding.com>.

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