SVEditor

SVEditor is an open source graphical project implemented in Java and based on the famous and powerful Eclipse IDE, providing a basic Integrated Development Environment for editing Verilog and SystemVerilog files.

Features at a glance

The application uses a scanner that is similar to ctags for extracting the information from SystemVerilog and Verilog source files. It is engineered to be tolerant of errors, as well as to ignore unrecognized language constructs.

Among some of SVEditor’s features, we can mention colorizing for SystemVerilog keywords, outline view linked with editor, file structure view, SystemVerilog source index, syntax coloring editor, content assist, and cross-linking between data structure usage and declaration.

Getting started with SVEditor

There are multiple ways to install the SVEditor software on your GNU/Linux computer, considering the fact that we’ve already installed the latest JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and Eclipse IDE software.

For exemple, you can download the latest version of the project as a JAR archive that can be opened into an existing Eclipse environment, you can search the application in the main software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution, or compile it yourself using the source package provided right here on Softoware.

For more details, do not hesitate to check out the project’s website by clicking the link at the end of the article.

Under the hood and supported operating systems

Taking a look under the hood of the SVEditor application, we can notice that it has been written entirely in the Java programming language and integrates with the Eclipse IDE for its graphical user interface.

Being written in Java, SVEditor is a cross-platform software that runs on all operating ssytems where the Java Runtime Environment and Eclipse IDE are available, including GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It has been successfully tested on computers supporting either of the 64-bit (x86_64) or 32-bit (x86) CPU architectures.

What is new in this release:

• (315) - Correct an issue with the task/function override-annotation finding code. In some cases, virtual methods from classes declared in included files would be marked in the active source file.
• (nobug) - Add compilation-argument import support for -mfcu option
• (enh) - During compilation-argument import, add support for executing the commands being intercepted by the compiler wrappers. Sometimes a compilation failure causes the entire process to terminate early.

What is new in version 1.5.1:

• Correct a NPE in the label provider when an unlabeled generate statement is inferred from a begin block within a generate block
• Add defparam statements to the Outline view
• Add content assist support for parameters declared on the containing module
• Align content assist support for interface instantiation with the support already present for module instantiation
• Enhance handling of undefined macros to reduce the number of follow-on parse errors.
• Correct a bug involving missing include files due to incompletely-specified include directories. Previously, editors would still show the include files as missing even after correcting the include directories. Now, the editors show correct information.
• Allow module declarations without a terminating ';'. This appears to occur when the module has a protected-content body.

What is new in version 1.5.0:

• Change content-assist label provider to display the type name of built-in net proposals (eg wire[14:0])
• Add support for code completion of hierarchical references that use macros. For example: `TOP.sub.signal
• Corrected a bug involving auto-indent of code templates when preference settings cause spaces rather than tabs to be inserted.
• Add support for multiple content-assist contexts, which allows code templates to be selected based on how the content begins as well as the name associated with the code template.
• Added default code templates for some commonly used structures: always_ff, always_latch, always_comb, if, else, do, while, for, case, casez, casex, function, task, initial, final, assert

What is new in version 1.4.9:

• #(298) - Correct a pre-processor bug involving comments inside a macro call
• #(300) Natural Docs update - Correctly handle (start code) ... (end) blocks in comments
• #(301) Leading white space at start of code section getting corrupted
• #(302) Bullets in pop-up help
• #(303) NDOC Parser - Links not showing up in summary table

What is new in version 1.4.8:

• Property parser bug corrected
• Add preference setting for how auto-reparse is done within the active editor. If set to -1, re-parse is only performed when the file is saved. Otherwise, the setting is a delay for how long to wait.
• Correct a parse bug in an associated-array initialization statement involving scoped identifiers.
• Correct an indexer crash when the argument file contains a directory path rather than a file path. The indexer now ignores the directory path, and the argument-file parser adds an error marker.
• Correct block-comment colorizing in argument files
• Indenter behavior with "assert" and "randomize with" inconsistent
• Correct a parse bug involving xor/or/and array-reduce methods

What is new in version 0.8.9:

• This version adds bugfixes and improvements to the way index information is shown to the user.

What is new in version 0.1.8:

• This release improves auto-indent by making it adaptive (makes a best attempt to follow the indents used in the file), fixes a few small bugs, and improves content assist with class-parameter awareness.

What is new in version 0.1.2:

• This release adds content-assist support for specialized parameterized classes, content-assist support for built-in methods of arrays and queues, and a class hierarchy view. Various bugs have also been fixed.

What is new in version 0.1.1:

• The 0.1.1 release of SVEditor adds support for source indenting and better support for auto-indent. Auto-indent is now enabled by default (users with existing workspaces will need to manually enable auto-indent).

Requirements:

• Eclipse
• Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment