RE: [sv-cc] SV-CC Meeting minutes for 02/15/2006 -- vpiColumn et. al.

Hi all, 

About the following:
===
   - vpiEndColumn and vpiColumn issue brought up by Francoise

     Chas recalls us discussing this during balloting, and that Bassam
     thought it was important that they remain.  Michael thinks these
     are to help figure out what caused the state change.  Abby doesn't
     think that it matches the other way things are done.  This needs
     to be looked at more carefully.  At the very least, these need
     to be added to the include file. Michael will provide Francoise
     an example.  Francoise will file a Mantis item and work with
     Michael on a solution.
===

I reviewed this a bit now. I think Michael is right about the reasoning
-- it is about knowing the detailed expression progress (that caused
fail say), a very basic debug (printing) capability. For details see the
"step" portion of the Assertion API. 

1) For example:

property p;
  @clk s1 ##1 s1;  // <<<< when we report that "s1" did not match, which
s1 do we mean ? Need column (for printing say) ...
endproperty

A: assert property(p);

2) For the "history" of issue you can refer to LRM 3.1a and look at:

typedef struct t_vpi_assertion_step_info {

>>>>>p_vpi_source_info<<<< *exprs_source_info; /* array of source info
*/

} s_vpi_assertion_step_info, *p_vpi_assertion_step_info;

Now in P1800 revision we killed the source_info bit and opted to offer
the data in more of VPI form, hence the vpiColumn et. al., but seems
forgot to upgrade the include file.

3) Bug in LRM: I think the "location" block was meant to be for
expressions (see the "step" part...) i.e. should be at 27.36 "Sequence
expression" (to cover expr/sequence_inst  ...). The assertion/cover/....
Do not really need this we already can get this info from the
declaration (vpiDefFile/Line ... Note no column... Well assuming
reasonable user indentation :)!).

** BTW, I do not think there is a need to add this "location" to 27.34
as well (for property_expr), the original intent for sequence level is
good enough and still holds true given today's property composition
constructs, adding this makes little sense.

4) TODO:
 - Copy "location" block to 27.36
 - Remove from 27.31
 - Change all occurrence of vpiDefLineNo to vpiLineNo
 - Change all occurrence of vpiDefFile to vpiFile
 - Add the "location" items (except vpiFile) to sv_vpi_user.h Annex I.

Thx.
-Bassam.

--
Dr. Bassam Tabbara
Synopsys, Inc.
(650) 584-1973