Atom linter systemverilog

Intro

This is a atom-linter provider that parses vcs output so that it can be used as a linter. This means it is compatible with everything vcs is, incl. systemverilog, verilog and vhdl.

Requirements

• A makefile with a silent target linter (add .SILENT: linter to the makefile) that:
  1. Prints the directory in which vcs is run. This is necessary as the makefile can cd into another directory and this directory should be known. This should be the first output of make linter. (For this reason, the target should be silent)
  2. Runs vcs, with 2>&1 || true appended to the command so that errors are not considered as a failed linter run.
  3. Is located in the directory of the source (rtl) files, or any parent directory.
• vcs, available in PATH
• python (tested with 3.6), available in PATH
• Atom text editor with linter package installed. You probably want language packages for your hdl languages as well.

Installation

1. copy code into atom-vcs-linter subdirectory (create it, or let git do it) of atom's packages directory (linux: ~/.atom/packages)
2. cd into folder
3. run apm install. With portable atom, this is available in <atom_install_dir>/resources/app/apm/bin

TODO

• Get the readme in package settings (this works sometimes but not consistently)
• support more errors and warnings
• support displaying of line-breaks in error messages. This might be something to fix at a higher level (atom-linter / atom).
• normal installation process

FAQ

• Q: Why is it slow? A: it is about as fast as make linter, so speed up that. If you're not doing already, make sure you use incremental builds with vcs.
• Q: Why do I have to do this complex installation procedure? A: because I don't know how to simplify it and am too lazy to find out. If you know, please tell me or fix it yourself and send a pull request.
• Q: It shows an error/warning/... on the first line of a wrong file, instead of at the correct location mentioned in the error. A: Please file an issue with the output of make linter (you can strip confidential parts if you want, just make sure the lines with and around the error/warning/... are still in there) and mention where you would like the error/warning/... to be shown (file and line). The code uses general regexes to extract this data, which might fail sometimes as vcs errors/warnings/... do not follow a strict template that I can parse.