Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) have long been the primary tool for software engineers. Like an airplane cockpit, an IDE is the control center from which the engineer accesses all of the data and tools that he needs. IDEs, and especially Eclipse, have proven to be extensible, open, high quality platforms. However, until now, IDEs have not been popular in hardware development circles. This is partly because many of the available IDEs for hardware development have not lived up to the potential of IDEs that is typical in the software world. Instead, IDEs tend to be overly complex, closed, and they lock the customer in. Today, though, Eclipse is finally gaining traction among EDA (electronic design automation) and FPGA companies. One such EDA company, Sigasi, has just released the first commercial VHDL plugin for Eclipse. Now, at last, hardware design teams can use Eclipse as a basis for their own customized IDEs, based on the commercial and open- source plugins that they need in their central cockpit for hardware design. I've published a white paper on this subject. http://www.sigasi.com/content/why-hardware-designers-should-switch-eclipse I'd be interested to know what you guys think. kind regards Philippe Faes Founding CEO Sigasi http://www.sigasi.com
Why hardware designers should switch to Eclipse
Started by ●March 22, 2010
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:43:04 -0700, Philippe wrote:> Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) have long been the primary > tool for software engineers. Like an airplane cockpit, an IDE is the > control center from which the engineer accesses all of the data and > tools that he needs. IDEs, and especially Eclipse, have proven to be > extensible, open, high quality platforms. > > However, until now, IDEs have not been popular in hardware development > circles. This is partly because many of the available IDEs for hardware > development have not lived up to the potential of IDEs that is typical > in the software world. Instead, IDEs tend to be overly complex, closed, > and they lock the customer in. > > Today, though, Eclipse is finally gaining traction among EDA (electronic > design automation) and FPGA companies. One such EDA company, Sigasi, has > just released the first commercial VHDL plugin for Eclipse. Now, at > last, hardware design teams can use Eclipse as a basis for their own > customized IDEs, based on the commercial and open- source plugins that > they need in their central cockpit for hardware design. > > I've published a white paper on this subject. > http://www.sigasi.com/content/why-hardware-designers-should-switch-eclipse> I'd be interested to know what you guys think. > > kind regards > > Philippe Faes > Founding CEO Sigasi > http://www.sigasi.comNothing beats Emacs
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
On Mar 22, 4:06=A0pm, General Schvantzkoph <schvantzk...@yahoo.com> wrote:> Nothing beats EmacsOn whole I agree with you, however let's be realistic, the learning curve for Emacs is incredibly steep. For folks who are eyeball-deep in VHDL code 100% of the time, learning Emacs pays off in dividends that continue for years to come. However, not all engineers are in positions where that payback will be as great or continuous. For those, something like Sigasi might work pretty well. I have done a little bit of work with Sigasi in the last week or so. As IDE's go, it's pretty decent. It's far more code centric than most IDE's I've used, and seems well put together. While I suspect I'm faster with Emacs (and as such, some of the refactoring tools Sigasi implements aren't as useful) I've been very interested in how someone new would respond to the environment. It's a lot better than shoving someone into the text editors in any of the vendor tools, and similar products like HDL Designer have the siren call of the schematic capture design which I think leads into bad design practices. Anyhow, Sigasi does seem to be a good tool. I don't know if the price point will make it successful -- another reason emacs is kind of amazing is that it's entirely open source and free, but I wish the developers the best of luck. I daresay it's a hard market to break into. If we get into a position to be purchasing more tool licenses, I'll definitely ask folks to evaluate it. I know I'd feel a lot better about someone using that tool, rather than HDL Designer.
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes:> Nothing beats EmacsI agree! I hate Eclipse. Petter -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
On 22/03/10 21:54, Petter Gustad wrote:> General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes: > >> Nothing beats Emacs > > I agree! I hate Eclipse. > > PetterI find Eclipse baffling, though I wouldn't say I hate it. It seems to have weird jargon (what is a perspective?). I also found it seemed slow (probably because I was running it on a slow machine): but I've never found vi or emacs feel slow. regards Alan P.S. I am a wimp (WIMP?) so I use nedit or notepad++... -- Alan Fitch
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
BLOOOAAAATTTEEEEDDDDD Eclipse is painful to use for me. I'm a Vi guy. Let the Vi/Emacs wars ensue :) On 03/22/2010 06:03 PM, Alan Fitch wrote:> On 22/03/10 21:54, Petter Gustad wrote: >> General Schvantzkoph<schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> writes: >> >>> Nothing beats Emacs >> >> I agree! I hate Eclipse. >> >> Petter > > I find Eclipse baffling, though I wouldn't say I hate it. It seems to > have weird jargon (what is a perspective?). > > I also found it seemed slow (probably because I was running it on a slow > machine): but I've never found vi or emacs feel slow. > > regards > Alan > > P.S. I am a wimp (WIMP?) so I use nedit or notepad++... >-- Jason Thibodeau www.jayt.org
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
Generally I use nedit and a whole bunch of perl scripts/java apps I've written over the years. I'm not totally against eclipse. I use it with the Lattice mico32 environment for instance. Regarding the Sigasi tool, the price on the website is 'within reason'. What's not within reason, IMHO, is the licensing model. If I don't fork out every year it will stop working. I would never even look at a tool that I can't get a perpetual license for. If I develop a project with it then I want to be able to come back to it again in five years if I have to regenerate the project from my archives. Philippe schrieb:> > I've published a white paper on this subject. > http://www.sigasi.com/content/why-hardware-designers-should-switch-eclipse > I'd be interested to know what you guys think. > > kind regards > > Philippe Faes > Founding CEO Sigasi > http://www.sigasi.com
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
On Mar 22, 2:36=A0pm, "M. Norton" <remill...@gmail.com> wrote:> On whole I agree with you, however let's be realistic, the learning > curve for Emacs is incredibly steep.A steep learning curve is a Good Thing. If it was shallow, it would take you a very long time to learn it.
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
Eclipse is slow even on fast machines. My most recent experience with it is on a Phenom II X4 965BE machine (quad core 3.4 GHz), and it still is noticeably sluggish. Years ago, people used to criticize Emacs for being slow and a resource hog. By today's standards, Emacs is lean and mean.
Reply by ●March 22, 20102010-03-22
