How to Install Verilog-Mode version 3.29 for Emacs

Click here if you've got it installed, but got no colors...

Click here if you want to see some frequently asked questions and answers.

Take the mail message your received, and save it into a file. Let us say you save it into a file called foo.

Run uudecode on the file. There is no need to worry about deleting any mail headers; uudecode is pretty smart about all that. What you would type is:

        % uudecode < foo
              
              This will create a file called verilog-mode.el.gz in your
              current directory. Now you can remove the file called
              foo.

this perl version

Now you need to uncompress the file; use gunzip which you should have, if not you can get it from the Free Software Foundation. Run:

        % gunzip verilog-mode.el.gz

To install verilog mode for just your own use continue as follows:

Make a directory called elisp in your home directory.

put the file verilog-mode.el in this directory, and call the file

verilog-mode.el

edit the file .emacs in your home directory. Create this file if it does not already exist.

Add the lines below (starting with (defun) to that file. Then run a new emacs process. You are all set; this new emacs and all subsequent emacsen now will know about verilog files and how to indent them, and colorize them.

Note: you can remove the old lisp you may have from using a previous version of verilog-mode; the below is all you need. The old stuff tried to complete the installation of font-lock mode, pick rational colors, and figure out what color your background screen was. Emacs is a fair bit better at this now.

    (defun prepend-path ( my-path )
    (setq load-path (cons (expand-file-name my-path) load-path)))
    
    (defun append-path ( my-path )
    (setq load-path (append load-path (list (expand-file-name my-path)))))
    ;; Look first in the directory ~/elisp for elisp files
    (prepend-path "~/elisp")
    ;; Load verilog mode only when needed
    (autoload 'verilog-mode "verilog-mode" "Verilog mode" t )
    ;; Any files that end in .v should be in verilog mode
    (setq auto-mode-alist (cons  '("\\.v\\'" . verilog-mode) auto-mode-alist))
    ;; Any files in verilog mode should have their keywords colorized
    (add-hook 'verilog-mode-hook '(lambda () (font-lock-mode 1)))

To install verilog mode for general use, continue as follows:

put the file verilog-mode.el in the appropriate directories, for XEmacs, it is likely to be /usr/local/lib/xemacs/site-lisp, and for FSF emacs it is likely to be is /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. I say likely, because the person who installed emacs at your site is free to customize this to their preference.

An easy way to determine the right place is to type C-h v load-path RET to emacs; this will give you a list of the paths that are searched to find lisp files. Here, typing at FSF emacs, I get:

load-path's value is ("/home/mac/emacs/lisp"
 "/usr/local/share/emacs/19.34/site-lisp"
 "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp"
 "/usr/local/share/emacs/19.34/lisp")
Documentation:
*List of directories to search for files to load.
                
                From examining this, I deduce that
                /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp seems appropriate. I
                didn't choose /usr/local/share/emacs/19.34/site-lisp as
                verilog-mode.el is not emacs-version specific.

Edit the file site-start.el in the site-lisp directory. Create this file if it does not already exist.

Add the lines below to that file. Then run a new emacs process. You are all set; this new emacs and all subsequent emacses you or anyone else at your site ever startup will know about verilog files and how to indent them, and colorize them.!

;; Load verilog mode only when needed
(autoload 'verilog-mode "verilog-mode" "Verilog mode" t )
;; Any files that end in .v should be in verilog mode
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons  '("\\.v\\'" . verilog-mode) auto-mode-alist))
;; Any files in verilog mode should have their keywords colorized
(add-hook 'verilog-mode-hook '(lambda () (font-lock-mode 1)))

Colors

For a while, I distributed code folks could put in their .emacs that would attempt to figure out what version of emacs (FSF or XEmacs) was installed, and which sub version of the two major packages was in use. Further, it attempted to determine if the user had a dark, or a light background, and then would install my notion of what might be nice colors.

The world is changing too fast; and both XEmacs and FSF emacs now have easy to modify, and quite reasonable defaults. Therefore I removed my distributed code, and have added this section to support folks still using older emacsen. Find your version below, and see what hints I have for getting colors to work.

First: install verilog-mode as per the above instructions.

XEmacs 20.x: Use menu bar Options->Customize->Faces... and set the font-lock-* faces to pleasing colors.
XEmacs 19.16, XEmacs 19.14: Use menu bar Options->Edit Faces... and set the font-lock-* faces to pleasing colors. Then in menu bar Options->Syntax Highlighting select Colors
FSF emacs 19.34
Older versions: Best is to upgrade if you can. Try:

Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers!)

Q 1: I share my verilog to someone using codewrite. When they edit the code it looks unindented. Is the problems tabs, can I control whether the tools inserts tabs???: A 1: This is a general problem sharing files between folks. It also occurs between folks using the same editor, as many editors allow one to set the tab width. The general solution is for you to add a write file hook that expands tabs to spaces.
Q 2: If I use Helvetica as my font, the auto indent doesn't work.: A 2: The indent scheme used by the verilog mode is based on counting spaces, and hence only works if you are using constant width fonts. Helvetica is not constant width, while Courier, or Fixed and the like are constant width. Sorry.
Q 3: How do I indent a region of code; typing TAB on every line is getting old...: A 3: Use C-M-\ to indent a region (selected by setting the point at one end, and having the cursor at the other end, as usual). Perhaps a future version of the emacs mode will include functions that mimic some of C's extra bindings.

Michael McNamara