Looking for Veriloga lint program

Can anyone tell me how to check my veriloga for good style using a lint
type program? I searched this board and did a quick google, but did not
find anything that looked like a veriloga lint.

I recently had this code that did not do what I thought it would do:

generate i(0,5,+1) begin
code =code + (V(address >vth) ? pow2 : 0;
end

I was expecting it to take my address and turn it into a number, but it
didn't. It always gave 32 as an answer.

Adding a set of paren fixed it:
code =code + ((V(address >vth) ? pow2 : 0);

The original did compile and run so I was hoping lint could find an
error like this....

David Reynolds

 

In this very particular case, I would say that if verilog would have
supported the += operator you would never discover that the ternary
operator has the lowest precedence of all operators. Would a linter see
this as a possible error? How about all those cases where this
behaviour is intended? Your ternary itself is no problem, I see loads
of code where the parenthesis are not there (because the ternary has
lowest precedence anyway) so you have even less control on what belongs
where.

In the skill ref and user manual they say that you have to be careful
to enforce proper precedence with parenthesis. Maybe that should be
done explicitely in the Verilog-A manual also, maybe by using this as
an example.

But, no, I don't know of any linter. Do you guys usually use linters?
If so, shouldn't that be a responsibility of Cadence?

 

Well, a syntax check is being done when you close the cellView after editing it.
It's not a lint as such.

Anyway, I don't think this example would be caught by a lint, because you can't
tell that it wasn't intended. If you omit the parentheses and don't know the
precedence of each operator, then it will do other than you want if you get it
wrong!

Of course it would be a reasonable enhancement request for Cadence to provide a
linting tool for Verilog-A(MS), but not sure that it is necessarily a
"responsibility"?

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Andrew, I was looking at it from a different point of view... verilog
has a whole eco system of lint programs to try and help people make
good models... and these are supposed to be professional code writers!
Looking at veriloga, which I would claim is used more by people who
don't code for a living so a lint tool would be even more valuable to
them.

Sounds like an opportunity to me...

David

 

It does sound like an opportunity. Not speaking for Cadence here, but I guess
the trouble is that people would pay an independent company for such a lint
program, but would expect Cadence to give it away... (strange that, isn't it?).

Andrew.

 

Might be an opportunity for an Open source team..
Could be written as a stand alone tool, and then integrated into Nedit,
vim, eemacs.
OTOH Thats the kind of mistake each of us makes only twice..
Don't want this to be TOO easy to do!

 

I would call it one of those little utilities that makes a difference.
That won't justify a 20% increase in license fee but it would probably
make an engineer more comfortable with his Cadence toolchest. And we
all know a happy user is a happy user.