Sigasi extension for VS Code

It is Sigasi’s mission to make you better HDL design and verification engineers. You all have more important things to do than struggling with the complicated syntax and semantics of SystemVerilog and VHDL.

We do that by giving you instant feedback on your code. Microsoft developed the VSCode editor and Sigasi implemented a language server with support for Verilog, SystemVerilog, and VHDL.

When you make a syntax error, for example when you have an extra semicolon trailing a define, you are notified immediately. So it is a lot easier to spot and fix these issues. In VHDL this works exactly the same way. Note that we not only detect syntax problems but also analyze, or lint, your code for more complex problems, while you type Sigasi also helps you with autocompletes. Sigasi understands the context and offers smart suggestions, much better than standard dictionary autocompletes. Of course, the basic editing features are also covered, such as block selection and syntax highlighting, etc.

Sigasi also added some extra views for working with HDL code. To quickly navigate, check the outline or minimap. And definitely check the Problems View for a quick overview of all remaining issues in your project.

With the Sigasi language server in VS Code you can also very efficiently navigate your code. When you hold down the control button on your keyboard, all identifiers become hyperlinks to their declaration. This allows you to very quickly navigate around through your codebase. And often you don’t even need to navigate to the declaration to get the information you need. Simply hover your mouse pointer over the identifier, to get a nice hover with all the information you need. Notice that it also shows you the code comments. Isn’t that a nice incentive to better document your code? Navigation also works in the opposite direction through the language-aware search features. Right-click, select “Find All References” and you’ll get a nice list of all places where this identifier is used.

This demo would be too long if we demo all available features, so I’ll finish with one of the most powerful ones: “Refactoring” This allows you to improve the name of any declaration in your design in a safe and consistent way throughout your entire project.

Speaking of projects, setting up projects is easy for straightforward projects and nicely scales with the project’s complexity. It is a matter of pointing to the folder with the source code. For Verilog you’ll need to configure the include paths, for VHDL you’ll need to configure the libraries.

This quick demo clearly showed how Sigasi combines the simplicity of a code editor with powerful features that help you focus on executing your ideas. So we invite you to try it on your own projects. The VSCode extension itself is free, but you’ll need a license to unlock the Sigasi language server. Existing users can use their license regardless of the tier, new users can request a license on our website.

Thank you, we look forward to your feedback.