HDL development tools

[pix3l]

Hi all,

For professional use, I'd like to purchase a tool for VHDL development. So far I have tried Sigasi eclipse plugin and Amiq DVT eclipse plugin. Both are very nice tools which are a lot more capable than the Lattice Diamond IDE which previous choices have required me to use.

Now comes the question: has any of you used these tools and if so, what are your recomendations for a choice?

Best regards,
Pix3l

[Scrts]

I don't see any reason to buy something... E.g. I've always used Quartus and was happy with it. Some people use Emacs, which is also free.

[nctnico]

Sigasi works nice but unfortunately they only sell time limited / node locked licenses so that is a no-go. I'm using the open source Veditor instead for VHDL which works OK and offers almost the same features as Sigasi when it comes to helping with making the sourcecode managable.

@Scrts: the plugins pix3l is writing about help to navigate through large projects and do things like realtime syntax checking, code completion, etc. Once you get used to that you never want to get back to Notepads with a compile button stuck onto them.

[pix3l]

Thanks both for your answers!

Indeed, Nico, once you are spoiled with such a tool that is smart enough to know what you want to type you don't want to go back.

To clarify: both tools are available in floating license form but are indeed payed on a yearly basis.

[pix3l]

Hi Nico,

I just tried Veditor but I could not find a refactoring option, is this something that's missing?

Best,
Pix3l

[nctnico]

It could be refactoring is missing from Veditor. I'm not quite sure though because it has been a while since I used it. I would happily spend the money on Sigasi if they provided a one time non-node locked license for a reasonable price or there was a possibility to work around the node locking. The software procurement rules simply forbid me to buy the kind of licenses they offer. Sigasi is a small company; if they go belly up you are left with non-working software you rely on. Too bad the people behind Veditor don't take donations to speed up development.