The SHA1 sum (or hash) is a fingerprint of a file. After you download a file, you can check that it is downloaded correctly by calculating its SHA sum. If the SHA sum is correct, you can be sure that the download was correct too. On the Sigasi download page, you find the zip files that contain the actual Sigasi application, and also a small text file with the correct SHA sums .

• On Windows, you can compute the SHA using this tool
• On Linux, you can use the command line tool sha1sum.

This sometimes happens on Windows. You have probably triggered a keyboard shortcut that switches your keyboard lay-out.
Read the documentation of the language bar keyboard shortcuts

Language Bar in Windows

If you only use your local keyboard lay-out and not the standard English lay-out, you might as well diable the language bar.

Sigasi stores all project information in two files: .project and .library_mapping.xml. If you track these files you have everything you need.

• .project describes all generic information on your project: which files belong to your project, …
• .library_mapping.xml describes the mapping of your VHDL libraries.

You can revert to older revisions of these files while Sigasi is running. Sigasi will update as soon as the files are refreshed.

If your license key does not work, the first things to check are:

• Is the MAC address correct?
• Has the license expired?
• Did you copy the license string exactly as it was sent to you?

A license string (or license file) looks like this:

INCREMENT com.sigasi.hdt sigasi 2.0 18-nov-2012 uncounted \
        VENDOR_STRING="company:www.example.com;id:3;mac:10f2dd92c5ac;name:John \
        Doe;type:trial" HOSTID=ANY ISSUER=Sigasi ISSUED=21-Oct-2012 \
        START=21-Oct-2012 SIGN="0CCC 87EA 9BB6 256E 7D81 E49D B2A6 \
        E53D 1CA5 41D4 63DF 8671 5695 EF82 0E30 1028 732D DED3 0999 \
        FD11 8B97 42B0 7CF2 F51F 20A0 DA6E 7F54 9D64 FF29 49AB"

Locked licenses

Since Sigasi 2.5 we use INCREMENT instead FEATURE Flexnet keys. If you paste such a key in older versions of Sigasi you will get following error message: "Licence is not valid (Can't Find Licence File (Increment com.sigasi … ".
We encourage you to switch to the most recent release of Sigasi 2.x. If you must stay with your old version, there is another workaround: save your key in a text file (e.g. sigasi.lic) and adding the path to this file in the license key field on the preference page.

Floating licenses

If your floating license server does not function properly, try the following steps:

• Start the FlexLM daemon with the -z option to see what is going wrong
• Make sure the server name in the license key file is correct
• Firewall problems:
  • make sure that the port for the Sigasi FlexLM license daemon is open
  • you can force the port for the Sigasi license daemon by adding USE_SERVER and DAEMON sigasi port=<port number> to your license key
• On Linux you might have to install lsb:
  • sudo apt-get install lsb-core
  • zypper in lsb
  • yum install lsb
  • yum install redhat-lsb.i686
• You can not have spaces in the daemon path.
• Some users reported that specifying an arbitrary absolute path for the Sigasi daemon on Windows (e.g. DAEMON sigasi C:\\sigasi.exe port=27021) does not work. It only works if the sigasi daemon is in the C:\Sigasi folder.
• You are not allowed to have the directory name being the same as the daemon name. For example: c:\flexlm\sigasi\sigasi.exe is invalid, but c:\flexlm\vhdl_editor\sigasi.exe works fine.
• Make sure the environment variable is correct: SIGASI_LM_LICENSE_FILE=<port number>@<servername>

You can easily check the status of your license via the License Key preference page : Preferences > VHDL > License Key. At the bottom of this preference page you can see the type and expiration date of your license.

Contact us if you are still having problems after following the steps outlined here.

Yes, the Sigasi VHDL Eclipse editor supports all unicode characters, including Japanese characters. Note that the VHDL language does not allow any non-ASCII characters as identifiers, so you cannot use Japanese characters in signal names.

Kanji and Kana comment

The math_real package that is packaged with Sigasi HDT 1.x is a draft version of the IEEE standard. We cannot distribute the final version of this package due to IEEE's copyright requirements.

If you have a copy of the IEEE source files you can do the following as a workaround: You can remove the current IEEE library from your project's libraries and replace it with your own copy of those files.

• Sigasi 2.x users: Read about using your own IEEE packages.
• Sigasi HDT 1.0 users: More information is in the manual, chapter on VHDL Libraries

While you are configuring your libraries (mapping and unmapping files), the built-in compiler may trigger a full rebuild several times.

In order to avoid this, and make Sigasi more responsive while you configure your libraries, you can turn of automatic building:
Uncheck Project > Build Automatically. Don't forget to turn it back on after you're done configuring your libraries.

We offer floating licenses, based on the well know FlexNet (a.k.a. FlexLM) license manager.
Floating licenses are available at a minimum volume of five licenses. The price is the same as for node-locked licenses.

If your team is purchasing at least five licenses, you will have the choice between node-locked and floating licenses.

If you currently have five node-locked licenses and you want to upgrade to floating licenses, please contact us.

Sigasi Pro is not a simulator. If you don't have a VHDL simulator yet, we would recommend the following simulators. You can download them free of charge.

We have not had great results with FreeHDL or with Green Mountain VHDL. It seems that these projects may have been terminated.
GHDL on Mac OSX uses Wine, but works without problems.

Sure! To change the key binding (keyboard shortcuts) within Eclipse: Window > Preferences and then General > Keys.

In VHDL, certain identifiers (names) can be used more than once in the same scope. This is true for procedure names, function names and enumeration literals. These identifiers are overloadables.

Today, we do not have complete support for overloadables. Overloadables cannot be renamed, and the search function and open declaration may not work if there are indeed multiple candidates with the same name.

We will support type analysis and overloadables in a future version, but for now, this is still work in progress.

When you first run Sigasi, it asks for a workspace location. This workspace will hold meta-information (preferences, project information,...) and serves as the default location for your projects.

Sigasi HDT does not attempt to check full correctness of your VHDL code. We just run a set of syntax checks and general "sanity checks". This way, 90% of the common errors are caught before you even start your simulator.

As you design, you put your code through a funnel: first sigasi finds the first 90% of errors in your code, without ever running a simulation. Next you compile with the simulator and you find another bunch of problems. In each successive step of your design flow, you find harder to track errors in your design. Sigasi just helps you get a big number of issues out of the way early on, so that you can concentrate on finding the hard problems down the road.
Funnel of where to catch errors

All Eclipse products, including Sigasi HDT, can be configured to support Emacs keybindings. While it is not the same as Emacs, you can keep your habit of pressing CTRL-C and CTRL-X all the time.

Read more about Sigasi vs. Emacs VHDL Mode

We recommend to increase the default heap size settings of Eclipse. You can do this by adding following lines to eclipse.ini in your Eclipse installation folder (In the standalone Sigasi version, this is the sigasi.ini file):

-vmargs
-Xmx1400m

Note: If your eclipse.ini already contains these arguments, you should not append these parameters again, but instead modify the existing values. If -vmargs is there already, but -Xmx1400m is not; you should add -Xmx1400m after the existing -vmargs.

To uninstall Sigasi HDT, do the following:

• Remove your installation directory (e.g. hdt at the top level)
• Remove your workspace (e.g. sigasi-workspace)

If you run Sigasi as a standalone application, the automated update system will periodically check for updates. When updates are available, you are notified by a pop-up window called Updates Available in the bottom right corner:

If you want to install the updates, click anywhere in the pop-up window. After a few seconds, a new window will appear with further instructions.

The updates can be postponed by closing the pop-up. You can perform the updates at any time by clicking the update-icon in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

If the updates are not automatically fetched from our update server you are probably behind a firewall or proxy server. You can configure Sigasi's proxy settings in Window > Preferences > General > Network connections. If you can not add a firewall exception for our update site, the fallback solution is to download the complete application from our website. You can completely replace your old installation; all settings are stored in your workspace (the default is workspaceSigasi in your home directory).

Sigasi Eclipse Plugin

If you run Sigasi as an Ecipse plugin, you may need to check for updates manually, by clicking Help > Check for Updates.

You can enable automatic updates by opening this preference page : Install/Update > Automatic Updates. Next enable Automatically find new updates and notify me. Feel free to modify any of the available options.

Notes

It is good practice to first create a backup of your installation folder before running an update. This can be done by simply compressing the eclipse or the sigasi folder in an archive (zip file)

After you update, all caches will be cleared. Your initial build will take a longer than usual.

Standalone

Sigasi HDT is tested and supported on:

• Windows 7 (32 bit and 64 bit)
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (64 bit)
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard

However, it should work on most of the recent Linux distributions, on Windows XP and up, and on Mac OS X.

We recommend at least 2GB of memory, and you need about 200MB of free disk space.

Plugin

If you are using Sigasi as a plugin for your own Eclipse installation, you need in addition to the requirements above:

• Eclipse 3.6 or higher
• Java JRE 1.6 or higher

License servers

Floating licenses are based on the industry standard FlexLM technology. We offer license daemons for:

• RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (32 bit and 64 bit)
• Windows 7 (32 bit and 64 bit)
• Solaris (64 bit)

Contact us for more information about FlexLM floating licenses and license servers.

Each time you start Sigasi, the program checks to see if there are new updates from our update website (currently located at IP 195.144.71.15). Sigasi downloads the updates in the background and, when done, it asks you if it can install them.

Learn more about the automatic update feature and about updating Sigasi.

We have released support for block editing in Update 2009-07-17.

Note that in many cases where you are used to using block editing (e.g. instantiating an entity), you may not need it any more, thanks to intelligent code completion (see this blog post).

Many actions can be accessed using your mouse and using a keyboard shortcut, e.g. copying text can be done either by clicking Edit > Copy or by pressing CTRL-C. Of course, pressing a key combination is a lot faster than clicking in a menu.

MouseFeed pop up Whenever you use your mouse for something that also has a key binding, the MouseFeed function tells you what this keyboard shortcuts is. This will help you remember keyboard shortcuts for the actions you use most often.

The easiest way to avoid getting these pop ups --and gain a good deal of development speed-- is by using keyboard shortcuts when possible.

If you ever want to get back to your old tools (but we hope you won't), you'll have absolutely no trouble doing so. All your files are just the way you left them, except that we created two hidden files in your project folder (.project and .libraries.xml). You can just leave them sitting there or you can delete them after you stop using our tool.

In short: you are not locked in at all!

You do not have to change your directory structure, the names of your VHDL files or anything in your project folder. The only thing Sigasi HDT does, is add a few hidden files with project information.

No, you get the "full monty." All features are available when you request an evaluation license .

Just click Help > Welcome.

Most settings can be changed in Window > Preferences. In this dialog, you can either browse the menus to the left, or search for an item in the search field in the top left.

Settings dialog

Yes you can. Go to your account page, click the Edit tab and enter a new password.

Click the little triangle to the upper right-hand side of the problems view and look at the Group By and Sort By menu.

You can also filter which problem markers you will see in the Show menu; for example only errors and warnings for the current project.

Organize Problem Markers

Some projects use the IEEE VITAL packages:

use ieee.vital_timing.all;

use ieee.vital_primitives.all;

Sigasi does not ship these libraries. In order to use the VITAL packages:

1. Find a copy of those packages. Your FPGA software or your simulator may come with a copy. Look for files called prmtvs_p.vhd and timing_p.vhd
2. Drag those files from your file browser (Windows Explorer, Finder, Nautilus) to your Sigasi Project Explorer. If Sigasi asks: you want to Link to files, with absolute paths.
   Link files with absolute paths
3. Now, map the two files to the IEEE library: select both files in the Project Explorer, *right click > Library Mapping > ieee *
   Map files to IEEE library

Read more about setting up libraries in Sigasi Pro.

Speed

In order to keep Sigasi Pro fast, we recommend you avoid working with back-annotated or post-synthesis code. This code gets very big very fast and is not the main focus of Sigasi.
Do not map the package bodies of the IEEE VITAL libraries.Map files to IEEE library

Sigasi node-locked licenses are locked to the unique MAC address (NIC address) of your computer's network interface. An example of a MAC address is: 00:1c:42:00:00:09.

On Linux:

To find your MAC address on a Linux machine, type ifconfig -a in a terminal window.

On Windows:

originally posted on stackexchange.com

• Click the Start Button or press the Windows key.
• In the start menu search, type cmd.
• Hit Enter to execute the command prompt, or click on the cmd entry that appears.
• Type in ipconfig /all or getmac and it should execute both commands and the window will remain open such that you can see the output.

To enter your license key, go to Window > Preferences > VHDL > License Key and paste your key in the dialog.

You can set your indentation preferences (select tab characters or space charactes) in Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Insert Spaces for Tabs.

Problem Decorators

Normally, if your file contains an error, you will see error markers in several places, including in the Project Explorer. Those so-called label decorators can be either a red square with a white cross for errors, or a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark for warnings. Sigasi puts the decorators on the file that contains an error and all of its ancestors (the folder that contains the file, and the folder that contains that folder, all the way up to the project.

Library Decorators

Sigasi also puts the name of the VHDL library next to each VHDL and folder that is mapped to that library. In order to map files to a VHDL library, right-click on a VHDL file or folder and select Library Mapping.

Problem decorators and Library decorators in the Project Explorer

If you cannot see the problems decorators or library decorators in the Project Explorer, there are two possible reasons:

1. The file was not compiled as VHDL file. To fix this try:
   1. Check that your file is saved
   2. Check that the project has VHDL support: Right-click on the project > Configure > Add VHDL Support
   3. Make sure your project is being built: Project > Build Automatically
2. The decorators are disabled. To fix this, enable:
   1. Window > Preferences > General > Appearance > Label Decorations > Sigasi Problem Decorator
   2. Window > Preferences > General > Appearance > Label Decorations > Library Decorator

Legacy projects tend to accumulate files that are no longer needed in the projects. These files are still on your disk, or even in your revision control system, but the scripts don't feed them to the simulator or to the synthesis tools any more. These junk files can accumulate over time as:

• stale copies of files that are still in use
• auxiliary files that are only intended to hold code snippets for cut-and-paste reuse
• old or broken files that did have a function once, but don't any more.

Junk files can accumulate in legacy projects
The recommended approach is to remove these junk files. If you are using a revision control system, you can always go back, so there is no risk to removing stale files.

However, if there is a good reason to keep junk files in the project folder, you can unmap them from all libraries: Right-click the files and select Library Mapping > Unmap.

If you are using Eclipse for both VHDL and C development, you probably don't want to lock up a floating Sigasi VHDL license while you are working on C.
In order to use Eclipse without locking up a Sigasi license, you should close the VHDL perspective, close all VHDL projects and restart Eclipse.

Sigasi 2.x is shipped with only the IEEE libraries that are defined in the VHDL 93 standard (IEEE 1076.3). If you want to use a more recent standard or another version of these library files you can follow this procedure:

1. remove the IEEE folder from your project
2. open your the folder with your IEEE files in your file browser.
3. drag the folder to your Sigasi project to create a link to your IEEE folder.
4. map the new IEEE folder to the IEEE library: right-click > Library Mapping > ieee

If you want to restore your standard libraries, right-click on the project > Library Mapping > Restore Common Libraries

See how this works in a screencast.

If the project explorer shows the hidden files in from your revision control system (.hg or .svn directory), or there are too many files from Altera Quatrus or Xilinx ISE that clutter the project explorer, you can hide those files from view:

Select the View Menu (small triangle pointing down) > Customize View > Filters.
Customize View

Now you can filter out hidden files (`.* resources`) or `All non VHDL Files`.

You can turn occurrence highlighting on or off. Click the "Toggle Mark Occurences" icon in the toolbar.

Toggle Mark Occurences

On some computers, the standalone version of Sigasi will fail to start with an error message similar to: "Could not create the Java virtual machine." This happens especially on 32-bit Windows machines with less than 2GB of physical memory. The reason is that the Java virtual machine tries to allocate more much memory than what is available.

In order to solve this, you can to decrease the default heap size settings of Eclipse. You can do this by adding following lines to sigasi.ini in your Sigasi installation folder:

-vmargs
-Xmx1000m

This sets the maximum heap size to 1000 MB (instead of the standard 1400MB).

Note: Do not use eclipsec.exe instead of sigasi.exe, as this will ignore all of the settings configured in the sigasi.ini file.

The file eclipse.ini contains information that is passed to the Eclipse platform and to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

• If you are using an Eclipse distribution on Windows or Linux, the file is located in your eclipse directory.
• On Mac OS X distributions, the file is usually in Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini.
• For the Sigasi standalone product, the file called sigasi.ini

More information about this file can be found at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse.ini

Customers with a valid Sigasi HDT 1.0 Pro license can upgrade to Sigasi 2.0 Pro, free of charge.

Standard license keys are user locked, not node locked. If you want to upgrade to a new user locked license for Sigasi 2.0, just send us an email with your exact user name.

You might also be interested in floating licenses.

The full functionality of Sigasi 2.0 is available if you have less than 200 statements in your workspace (that is: in all your open projects combined). In this count, we do not include the STD and IEEE libraries that are provided by us.

Note that we count executable statements (concurrent statements and sequential statements) and not lines of code! Adding entities, components, data types or signals will not add to your statements count! The maximum project size would typically come down to 2000 to 5200 lines of code, depending on your coding style.

You can see how far you are from your allowed limit by looking at the colored bar at the bottom of your screen. The color changes from green to yellow to red as you approach the allowed limit.

Codometer

When you overrun the limit, you fall back to the Baseline Mode. Check out the feature matrix that compares the Baseline Mode to the Full Mode.

You can set your indentation preferences (select tab characters or space charactes) in Window > Preferences > VHDL > Formatting.

Note: There is a different solution For Sigasi 2.x.