Re: [myhdl-list] Re: toVerilog dynamic top level name

[Tom D. <td...@di...>]

Jan Decaluwe wrote:

> Ok - so we need another way to parametrize toVerilog's behavior.
> Note that until now I have been able to avoid "options" to
> the convertor, but at some point that may become unavoidable.
> So we need a general way support options, and "name" would
> be the first supported option.
>
> One could think of using function attributes, e.g.
>     toVerilog.name = "topname"
> However, with normal functions, this has a similar problem,
> as they have non-hidden attributes that we don't want to
> touch, e.g. func_name.
>
> What we would do is to create a ToVerilogConvertor class,
> that defines the supported option names as attributes.
> It would have a __call__ interface and toVerilog would
> become an instance of that class, so that its behavior
> would remain as it is now (except for the difference in
> instance name inference, as discussed earlier.)
>
> An advantage would be that the supported attributes
> can be managed attributes (properties) so that we can
> do any type of checking on them. Another advantage
> (in the future) is that a user could create other
> convertor instances with the options set to other
> values, e.g. toVerilogForXilinx.
>
> Back to our original issue: if as user wants set
> the instance name to another value than the default,
> the usage model would be:
>
>    toVerilog.name = "myInstanceName"
>    inst = toVerilog(func, *args, **kwargs)
>
> I'm inclined to implement it like that - so hurry
> with feedback if you want to stop me :-)


This would work, although it seems like logically a class is better for 
that. I wouldn't think to set an attribute to a function, even though 
python supports it. I am OK with it though, would get used to it, and 
probably learn and use that feature of python in other circumstances.

Let me throw in a couple more ideas:

a 2nd function,

inst = toVerilogNamed(func,name,*args,**kwargs)

or just changing toVerilog to that format, throwing backward 
compatibility to the wind. You could allow "" or None to use the default 
as it is now.

Tom