cocotb VS hdl_checker

The use of cocotb and pyuvm for verification

For FPGA/HDL work, there's cocotb

At the moment, it is not possible to directly simulate synthesizable contexts. In principle, I could add a simulator to CoHDL. As a Python implementation, it would be orders of magnitude slower than other solutions. Instead, I am using Cocotb to validate the generated VHDL and for the unit tests in the GitHub repository. There is also some very, very experimental support for formal verification, but it will take some time for that to become usable.

On the topic of simulation, you don't have to restrict yourself to using Verilog or VHDL to write your test benches. For example, Verilator lets you write them in C++, cocotb lets you use Python, and if you use SpinalHDL you will drive the underlying simulator using Scala.

I know it might be difficult without much context, but this makefile is called by a top level makefile. very confused if lines 35-74 do anything. They seem to be a mix of real makefile syntax and just straight up comments. what do these lines do?

Learn more about this here: https://www.cocotb.org/

Also consider cocotb, this thread has some compelling arguments. I'd say as a student, learning industry tools isn't necessarily the best thing you could spend your time on. Getting fast at design AND verification, where you can maintain flow state and run better microexperiments means you will understand more, faster.

Have you tried looking at the mixed language example?

I've written a LSP that uses modelsim, ghdl or Vivado to do error checking: https://github.com/suoto/hdl_checker

NeoVim + CoC + hdl_checker

As others mentioned, rust_hdl and ghdl ls are worth checking out. If your project has both VHDL and Verilog/SystemVerilog, might be worth checking https://github.com/suoto/hdl_checker (disclaimer, I'm the author). It's got less LS features than the other two but if you use it with modelsim it'll provide mixed language syntax check.

Specifically for HDL-files a lot of progress has been made in the last couple of years on lsp-mode and external LSP servers for code analysis of both VHDL and SystemVerilog. For SV I use the https://github.com/suoto/hdl_checker server that passes the code you are working on live to the Linting engine in Questa/ModelSim and marks the warning lines in the editor. It's nice to get immediate feedback on missing semicolons etc. although it still has a hard time handling large projects.