-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi,
On 18/01/2011 22:52, Alex Huntley wrote: > There is an Ada port of GTK if graphical front-ends are required. > > As far as System C and System Verilog go, I think it better to have > a really good VHDL simulator (like GHDL) than a mediocre simulator > having a go at implementing bits of equivalent languages. As an > amusing side note, a few years ago I heard a former chief > technologist of Mentor Graphics say that System Verilog gave > Verilog all the things that VHDL had from the start. Would adding > system C / System verilog capability make GHDL that much more > useful to that many people. In fact VHDL is a very good language for Hardware Description (HDL) but it is too much limited for verification (testing). VHDL2008 fix some of these limitations, but C++ or Python are better language for doing the verification job. Theses languages have many well documented libraries. For example, in VHDL it is hard to manipulate advanced data structures like maps,lists or scoreboards. In Python or C++ (with STL) data structure manipulation, like sorting, is easier. It's also hard to communicate with externals program in VHDL pure (for example a gdb server, Sockets, Pipes etc...) > Why Python scripting - most commercial simulators use TCL - this > would be a far better choice if GHDL was to incorporate a scripting > interface. Python is becoming the standard script language for open-source software. (GDB, Blender, Qemu, Open Office ...). It is often used to run regression tests for open source projects. It is available for a lot of platforms. It is very well documented and very well maintained. Even for commercial CAD Tools some vendors now allow Python scripting (ex:Ciranova PyCells). Furthermore, python can easily interface with C or C++ programs. > > Anyway, I'm not trying to fan the flames of a language war with > that anecdote - just to say that I think it's better to > concentrate development of GHDL as a really good VHDL simulator > than try to make it the jack of all trades and master of none - if > it's going to branch out then it can do regardless of the language > it's written in - Ada gives a lot of benefits and saves Tristan a > lot of bug fixing due to buffer overruns, bad type conversions and > all the congenital problems that come with C/C++. > Please don't mixup C and C++. They are different languages ! C has typing and memory problems, C++ hasn't such problems if you use standard containers (STL) and C++ type conversion correctly. Yes, C++ has others problems, it is not perfect and I agree that ADA is a good language. But you will find many more people interested in working on the project if you use C++: Compiler writer experts don't use ADA. GUI programming experts don't use ADA. I agree that ADA was a very good choice for Tristan because it was the unique developer of GHDL, he wanted to learn ADA, and finally GHDL works well. But if Tristan don't want to work on improving GHDL it will be hard to find a successor. I also found a similar opinion here: http://www.sigasi.com/content/why-ghdl-currently-not-good-enough If I have time, I will write in another message my opinion about what we can easily improve in GHDL without rewriting it ;) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJNODBwAAoJENlXRqSDmxB9O38H/2TuifGOKsfLxT3jZuYGSQ+E 289Rm1VPKNqE1BNH14NgkomG7MzXog/Y5eBgOSapeOS7z6KVBm1KLcKVYxPAARKD 57S7B2ozPPJ9Pevlqw7rI1T91WbVKi1ffeT22ryKRWTcxfJ+VaLy6OsxDsiwJ50e Bc7QTXxzRM4k48uH82zbWWFSdRA0d1nOmT4RN+YGBGCIYjWZEZY5VBwG4jVQsTD+ 7li44Y1UIu1FOpP7msn0QDhfm5UJia8hoaCxymOPh5nKvo2vxi7UWAFCrCcSqJjL PtYsPwUN+kmP869je8jdOGwcUGMRT1JXxSe9NypDb4jao506qYyH+YMqoYu42y4= =BrO1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Ghdl-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/ghdl-discuss
