Text editor for VHDL on a Mac

[glias]

Hello all,
I'm looking for a good text editor for VHDL code on Mac. Do you know one ?

regards

 

[yura717]

Hello all,
I'm looking for a good text editor for VHDL code on Mac. Do you know one ?

regards

Gedit and plugins

 

[permute]

It looks like OSX has vim installed, or that you can get vim. You can probably get emacs as well. They both have suitable features for VHDL. Primarily, syntax highlighting, block-editing, and marker-based code folding. I haven't found any good intellitype solutions for VHDL/Verilog projects yet.

Syntax Highlighting has obvious benefits.

Block-editing is amazing because VHDL is a very verbose language with a very regular structure. If you take the small amount of time to keep things columnized, you end up being able to copy/paste/modify large blocks of code easily.

Marker-based code-folding is my personal favorite. It is an option in vim, and a plugin for emacs. It lets you add special strings like {{{ and }}} to define fold points in the design. I find that I often have one or two related processes, a process and an instance, or an instance and a few extra lines of assignments and that I want to treat these as a logical section of my code. I end up partitioning (all code lines are in a fold) my files. When I open a file, I basically get a table of contents and can quickly navigate the file.

Both editors do have learning curve though.

 

[yura717]

vim and emacs editors only is good if you want FYS.

 

[permute]

I can't find a clear "FYS" meaning in this case. Either "first-year students" or "f yo self" were the top candidates. Though neither seem applicable.

Many of my coworkers have an adversion to vim/emacs though, and I certainly am always looking for better HDL tools. What features does gedit offer? Google isn't forthcoming about gedit/plugins must-have features. This is actually the first time I've heard of anyone using gedit for HDL development, so I am interested in an overview on what capabilities it has.

 

[glias]

Hello,
Thanks for your replies...
I don't use VIM and Emacs, too difficult for me.
I just installed Gedit, the last version supports the VHDL/Verilog highlight, so it's perfect for me !

Thanks a lot for your help

 

[BlackHelicopter]

I too use Emacs for VHDL editing and have spent much time trying to adapt it to my needs. Having the pleasure of having used Visual Studio as an IDE, I am always looking/expecting more from basic text editors such as Emacs/Vim/Eclipse-based for use as EDA tools. Anytime I hear someone bring up syntax highlighting as a compelling reason to use a certain text editor I start to cringe. Now-a-days its an embarrassment not to have syntax highlighting and should be considered 'standard issue'. Auto-completion, intelli-sense, refactoring, and easy project navigation are compelling reasons to use a text editor. Unfortunately these are not easy to come by. Emacs can be tweaked to almost-sort-of become this but not without a massive about of head-fucking first.

Anyway, as far as using Emacs to navigate source code files I have found etags/ctags to be quite helpful along with the speedbar for easier project navigation (if I can even call it that). For the tags its as simple as highlighting a word, hitting 'M-.', and going to the file where the function or entity or whatever you're looking for resides. The only downfall is that it works a certain percentage of the time as sometimes it takes you to the wrong place. Here are some instructions for setting up tags in Emacs, I suggest trying it out: https://www.coverfire.com/archives/2004/06/24/emacs-source-code-navigation/

I'll also have to try out the source code folding tip Permute suggested as that sounds like a nice feature to have. I too am always looking for better ways to do things so if anyone knows of or has found a nice tool for editing HDL code let us know. Recently there appear to be a handful of Eclipse-based options out there but I have yet to try them out. I have worked with Eclipse a bit and was pleasantly surprised at how easy things are to download and get set up, it looks promising.

 

[yura717]

Another a good editor is
https://www.sublimetext.com/2

 

[AdvaRes]

You can use editors like : TextWrangler, Editra, gedit, TaterEdit, Bluefish....