Semantics analyzing expression editors in IP-XACT design tool Kactus2

This paper presents parameter and expression editors of the design tool Kactus2. It is aimed at digital System-on-Chip (SoC) designs based on IEEE 1685 IP-XACT XML metadata standard. SoC’s are constructed by assembling
parametrized components using generators for hardware language code and design configuration. The key challenges are the management of dependencies
between thousands of parameters, as well as immediate validation and evaluation while editing. The expression editor in this paper has been designed
to overcome these challenges. The editors include real-time syntax, semantic
analysis and the use of UUIDs behind user displayed parameter names. The implementations for these have been published in Kactus2 v2.8 open source code, written in C++/Qt5, and consisting of 3000 LoC in the release. An independent industrial user on the SoC domain has verified the correctness,
completeness and usability of the new solutions. The designed editors significantly improve the SoC parameter editing and design configuration.