VHDL Souce Code Beautifiers

They're a pain in the arse :-)

In a previous contract I was working in a multi engineer team, any one of who could be asked to fix problems in any source file.

One guy would automatically run the emacs beautifier on any source code as soon as he'd checked it out, work on it then check it back in. (Only 1/3 of the team used emacs).

To anyone consequently doing a diff on his version and the previous one it looked like the whole design had changed instead of the line or two he'd altered.

If the diff tool had been configurable to ignore whitespace this might have been a bit better, but there would probably have been other changes to cloud the issues.

While I'm on this subject, someone else used to move big chunks of code about to where he thought they should go, even when doing minor changes to the source. This had the same affect as above when later doing a diff.

I'd say

1) Learn to write clear, structured commented code. Look at as many different peoples as you can and copy the one that looks right to you. If you've a sytle guide stick to it.

2) If you're editing someone else's source code stick to their style while you're doing it, especially for small changes (as recommended by Jack Ganssle,

although don't ask me exactly where).

Nial Stewart

------------------------------------------------ Nial Stewart Developments Ltd FPGA and High Speed Digital Design

In the places I've worked, this would have been sufficient grounds for the guy to be drawn and quartered. It is NEVER acceptable to reformat an entire source file when making minor modifications, and usually not even when making major mods.