"Diplomat" Language server and VSCode extension

[suzizecat]

Hi everyone !

TL;DR : A language server and its VSCode Extension

As I am alone on this and have not much known users, the documentation is minimal to say the least and those may have some rough edges but also some interesting features !

New users and peoples who actually know how to work with TypeScript and C++ and would take a look at this work would be very welcome !

---

As I have been disappointed with the available VSCode extensions made for working on SystemVerilog (often only supporting Verilog, and almost never supporting the jump across files implied by a "Go To references"), I decided some time ago to try and develop a Language Server based upon Slang that would fulfill my dreams of mass renames and jumping around...

Hence, I developed "Diplomat" (originally a side project to help on another extension: TerosHDL).
This LS (language server) is able to perform:

• Go to definition/references (across files)
• Syntax highlighting
• Rename symbol
• Syntax check and lint using Slang capabilities
• Semi-auto-detection of the design hierarchy (in absence of a designed top-level, all suitable files are passed to slang which sort this mess by itself)
• Ignore files/path/path patterns
• Open waveform files with GTKwave and have a kind of synchronization between GTKWave and the editor (this is a proof of concept and will evolve to something actually useful)
• Some kind of formatting (this is tedious to do)
• And maybe some features that I have forgotten.

This project is split in two elements:

• The LS itself, written in modern C++ and leveraging slang: https://github.com/suzizecat/slang-lsp-tools (this also includes some "playground level" stuff and tools to experiment with slang API)
• The VSCode extension, written in TypeScript (please god help me) and handling all the VSCode part and UI integration: https://github.com/suzizecat/diplomat-vscode .

As of today, I am using it as a professional work tool as a digital designer, and it starts to be comfortably usable.

While it may fail to properly analyze a big workspace simply on opening (I am talking hundreds of files, including UVM verification testbenchs that I have not tried to support yet), setting the top level file and excluding some unused folders usually get the workspace in a working state.

[suzizecat]

For reference, while it is a bit rough around the edges, the latest commits allows to see the value of a simulation opened by GTKWave directly within the source code (the values are updated when you change the cursor position in GTKWave):

[suzizecat]

I made a documentation (ongoing) and have setup a release flow on GitHub for both of those projects.
You can find:

• the documentation
• the server releases
• the client releases

The server is built on ubuntu-latest which is, as the time of writing, 22.04 .