Is there a tool which generates State Diagrams from VHDL code? Also is there an easy way to indent VHDL code like in Visual Studio if I press ctrl + i it indents.
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\$\begingroup\$ emacs has a "beautify VHDL" mode which is absolutely great. <CTRL-C> <CTRL-B> key combo. \$\endgroup\$– stanriCommented Jun 18, 2014 at 8:03
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\$\begingroup\$ if you use Quartus and your code is written in a state machine template you go to RTL viewer, state machine. \$\endgroup\$– user34920Commented Jun 18, 2014 at 9:01
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2 Answers
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Look into doxygen + graphviz to document your design. The graphviz / dot package lets you describe directed graphs (nodes + edges) which can be useful for drawing state diagrams. (If you're using verilog instead of VHDL, check out doxverilog.) I've recently started using this tool to document state machines in code I've inherited from another engineer.
However, I don't know of any tool to automatically reverse-engineer (recognize and extract) "state machine code" as distinct from just plain RTL code and localparams not meant to be a state machine. Even if you could reliably extract the possible states and their transitions, understanding what each state is intended to do still requires a human. So it's still up to you to understand the HDL code you're trying to document.
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Both the (no-cost) Altera and Xilinx webpack tools will do state diagrams for you, so long as your HDL actually infers a state machine. They are an enormous download though, and not especially welcoming to the beginner.
For Altera, run "RTL Viewer" after the analysis phase and navigate the hierarchy down to the state machine.
The editors in both tools are poor - for smart indent I'd recommend a decent programmers editor. Sublime Text 2 has VHDL/Verilog plugins that might do it.
