Waveform Viewer (rb wave)

Integration type: Integrated tool. rb wave is built around Surfer today; Vaporview / VS Code support is on the roadmap — tracked in issue #84.

External binary required: Surfer, built from the rtl-buddy/surfer fork on the rtl-buddy branch. Mainline Surfer works for basic FST viewing but not for WCP signal-value annotation. See Surfer build.

Editor integration: nvim for the full annotation round-trip (declaration jump + live signal values + add-from-editor). Any editor can be configured via editor-cmd for one-way "open at line".

See also: Installation — External tools by feature.

rb wave opens the Surfer waveform viewer for a test and connects it to your editor via the WCP (Waveform Client Protocol). When you right-click a signal in Surfer and choose Go to declaration, rtl-buddy:

1. Resolves the signal to its source file and line number
2. Opens (or reuses) your editor at that location
3. Annotates the signal's waveform value at the current cursor position as inline virtual text

Basic usage

cd verif/sandbox
uv run rb wave basic          # runs debug sim if no FST exists, then opens Surfer
uv run rb wave basic --resim  # force re-run of debug sim

Signal layout files are loaded automatically: if basic.surfer exists next to tests.yaml, Surfer opens with those signals pre-loaded.

Configuration

Add a cfg-surfer section to root_config.yaml:

cfg-surfer:
  - name: "surfer-default"
    path: "../surfer/target/release/surfer"  # or bare name on PATH
    wcp-port: 0                              # 0 = OS assigns a free port
    editor-cmd: "nvim +%l %f"               # %f = file, %l = line
    editor-terminal: "tmux"                  # tmux | iterm2 | terminal | ""
    editor-sock: "~/.local/share/rtl-buddy/wave-nvim.sock"  # enables nvim reuse
    ctrl-sock: "~/.local/share/rtl-buddy/wave-ctrl.sock"    # enables nvim → Surfer

See YAML Formats for all fields.

Signal value annotation

How it works

When a goto_declaration event arrives from Surfer, rtl-buddy:

1. Reads the signal value at the cursor timestamp from the FST via pywellen
2. Enumerates all other signals in the same module scope using the FST hierarchy
3. Runs a single bulk grep across the SV source files to map every signal to its declaration line (result cached for the session)
4. Pushes all values to the editor as EOL virtual text

Moving the Surfer time cursor fires a cursor_moved WCP event, which re-reads all scope signal values and updates the annotations live — no interaction required.

Two signals declared on the same source line are combined into one annotation:

logic a, b;    ▶ a=8'h0a  b=8'h05 [i_dut]
logic clk;     ▶ 1'b0 [i_dut]

Active scope

Clicking any signal in Surfer's signal list sets the active scope — the module instance used to resolve signal names. rtl-buddy updates the scope cache automatically via the scope_changed WCP event, so annotation context is always current without requiring a "Go to declaration".

nvim setup

The annotation feature requires a small nvim plugin. Install it once:

rb wave-install-nvim

This copies rtl_buddy_wave.lua to ~/.local/share/nvim/site/plugin/, which nvim auto-sources at startup. No init.lua changes are needed. Reinstall after rtl-buddy upgrades with --force:

rb wave-install-nvim --force

If the plugin is missing when rb wave starts with editor-sock configured, a warning is shown:

WARNING  nvim plugin not installed — run "rb wave-install-nvim" to enable wave annotations

Adding signals to Surfer from nvim

With ctrl-sock configured, place the cursor on any signal name in nvim and press <Space>wa (<leader>wa) to add it to Surfer's waveform view.

The signal is resolved using the active scope — click a signal in Surfer first to establish the instance context (e.g. clicking tb_top.i_dut.clk sets scope tb_top.i_dut), then add signals freely from nvim.

nvim: cursor on "rst"  →  <Space>wa  →  Surfer adds tb_top.i_dut.rst to waveform

The keymap requires ctrl-sock to be set in cfg-surfer and rb wave to be running. A warning is shown if the socket is unreachable.

Single-signal mode

To annotate only the signal you right-clicked (not the whole scope):

uv run rb wave basic --focused-signal

Editor socket reuse

When editor-sock is set, rtl-buddy launches nvim with --listen <sock> on first use. Subsequent goto_declaration and cursor_moved events reuse the running instance via --remote-expr nvim_exec2(...) — no new windows, no command-line flicker.

The socket is probed with a 300 ms timeout. If the socket is stale (nvim has been closed), the next goto_declaration opens a fresh nvim window.

Surfer build

The annotation features require Surfer built from the rtl-buddy branch:

git clone https://github.com/rtl-buddy/surfer.git ../surfer
cd ../surfer && git checkout rtl-buddy
cargo build --release

Point cfg-surfer.path at ../surfer/target/release/surfer (relative to root_config.yaml) or install the binary on PATH.