Linting

Requirements

Any of the following linters:

• Verilator
• Icarus Verilog
• Verible
• Slang
• Svlint
• Cadence HAL

After installing, make sure that it is available on the $PATH:

which verilator
/usr/bin/verilator

Configuration

By default some linters (e.g. verilator, svlint) will look for modules in the list of current open Verilog files and directories to perform linting.

Others, such as verible, will only lint current file without trying to find instance module definitions in other files. verible offers the option of configuring rules through customization of variable verilog-ext-flycheck-verible-rules, according to its syntax.

For example, the following snippet disables the lint checks for rule line-length and enables checks for parameter-type-name-style:

(setq verilog-ext-flycheck-verible-rules '("-line-length"
                                           "+parameter-type-name-style"))  

Usage

• verilog-ext-flycheck-mode-toggle is bound by default to C-c C-f.
• If run with prefix-arg C-u C-c C-f it allows selection of current active linter. This is particularly useful if switching between RTL and Verification code
  • Verilator is quite effective for RTL code but does not support SystemVerilog verification constructs
  • Verible can be very useful for one-file linting for Verification files, but might be less efective than others for RTL