ghdl diagnostics might be improved

[Sinisa Segvic]

Binary package hint: ghdl

In order to test a vhdl design in our environment with ghdl, one should say:

ghdl --elab-run --std=00 --ieee=synopsys MyComponentTB

This works nicely, however, my students often make a mistake
by specifying the *component file* instead of component name:

ghdl --elab-run --std=00 --ieee=synopsys MyComponentTB.vhdl

ghdl then aswers with:

/usr/lib/ghdl/bin/ghdl:*command-line*: bad character in identifier

And that's game over for my students, they then start
to complain about ghdl in general, and propose
doing their work only in Xilinx' software.

My suggestion would be to print an additional help message,
such as "did you specify a file name instead of the component identifier?",
before the correct complaint about a bad character '.'.

Cheers,

Sinisa

==

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

$ apt-cache policy ghdl
ghdl:
  Installed: 0.27+svn110+gcc4.3.2~dfsg-3
  Candidate: 0.27+svn110+gcc4.3.2~dfsg-3
  Version table:
 *** 0.27+svn110+gcc4.3.2~dfsg-3 0
        500 http://hr.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: ghdl 0.27+svn110+gcc4.3.2~dfsg-3
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ghdl
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-15-generic i686

[Peter Clifton (pcjc2)]

Perhaps you could make this suggestion directly to the upstream developers. Their site is: http://ghdl.free.fr/bug.html

Best wishes,
Peter Clifton

[Sinisa Segvic (sinisa-segvic)]

I have posted the suggestion to http://ghdl.free.fr/bug.html
Thanks for the tip!

Siniša