Re: Special 1364 Meeting to resolve Issue 680 (Configs)

From: Steven Sharp (sharp@cadence.com)
Date: Mon May 09 2005 - 20:26:21 PDT

  • Next message: Clifford E. Cummings: "Survey - use-model for configs?"

    I still see a possible compromise that would allow configs in Verilog
    source files while reducing the keyword conflicts caused by some of
    the config keywords.

    We have added the `begin_keywords directive that "turns off" certain
    keywords to match older versions of the language. We could add an
    additional version string that selects the keyword set that is allowed
    in Verilog-2001 source files but not in configs or library map files.
    This set of keywords would allow compiling almost all Verilog-1995
    source files, and all Verilog-2001 files that did not contain configs.
    It would be the more backward compatible dialect of Verilog-2001.
    There would be another version string that would reserve the same
    keywords plus the config and library map file keywords. A possible
    set of version strings would be "1364-2001" and "1364-2001+configs"

    The same could be done for Verilog-2005, since it also doesn't have
    any problematic keywords except the ones in configs. However, since
    the only difference between 2001 and 2005 is the uwire keyword, we
    could probably do without this.

    The main goal of having these two keyword sets is not so much that
    users will directly use the directives to get them. After all, if they
    are willing to put directives in all their files, they can set the
    keywords appropriately for each file. The goal is to define a dialect
    that users can use to compile all their Verilog files (1995 or 2001)
    without having to use any directives in them. This dialect could be
    the default of a tool or could be chosen by command line option. The
    `begin_keywords version string is just a way of defining this particular
    keyword set in the standard, and ensuring that all implementations
    support it.

    Steven Sharp
    sharp@cadence.com

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