Re:Developing open-source FPGA tools
by cmrdporcupine on Thursday November 14, 2019 @08:26AM
(#21535163)
Amen. I've been dabbling in the world of FPGA & hardware lately and I don't understand why hardware engineers tolerate the state of their toolsets.
Schematic design tools that make common tasks like drawing/connecting buses an obnoxious hassle involving futzing with the mouse making sure lines and nets line up when one should just be able to describe the whole thing in a DSL and have the tool build up an initial drawing for you.
FPGA "IDEs" with no auto indentation, refactoring/rename, no support for version control, arcane project structures that don't move easily between directory structures, non-modular tools that don't work well or at all outside of the IDE, critical settings buried in dialogs, 'drag and drop' authoring that takes you about 50% of the way to your solution and then falls over in a hot mess.
Schematic design tools that make common tasks like drawing/connecting buses an obnoxious hassle involving futzing with the mouse making sure lines and nets line up when one should just be able to describe the whole thing in a DSL and have the tool build up an initial drawing for you.
FPGA "IDEs" with no auto indentation, refactoring/rename, no support for version control, arcane project structures that don't move easily between directory structures, non-modular tools that don't work well or at all outside of the IDE, critical settings buried in dialogs, 'drag and drop' authoring that takes you about 50% of the way to your solution and then falls over in a hot mess.
Demand better