Interview with Veripool

Tool name: Vregs
Vendor: Veripool
Webpage: http://www.veripool.org/wiki/vregs/Intro
Interviewee: Wilson Snyder

Gary Stringham: I’m talking to Wilson Snyder from Veripool. Will you state the name of your tool?

Wilson Snyder: Vregs.

GS: What are two or three key features of your tool?

WS: It’s open-source. Unlike most of the tools, the model that Vregs was designed to adhere to is that the documentation—in other words, FrameMaker, Word or whatever documentation tool of your choice is the golden reference, as opposed to specifying a file which describes the CSRs and then doing some sort of maintenance on that file.

GS: How would you describe a typical customer of your tool?

WS: Well, first of all, it’s an open-sourced product, so the word “customer” doesn’t really apply. It’s probably different than all the companies you’ve talked to. This is not something that is actively marketed in a business sense; there are no real commissions or fees for use, so it’s different. Because of that, I don’t really have a good feel for how big the user base is.

There are several companies that use it. I think the typical use is people write documentation in the format the tool examples suggest. Typical adopters are start-ups that have been around maybe 5 years or so—in other words, since the tool’s existence—because new companies tend to be the ones that adopt new flows. They write their documentation in the format or something similar to what the tool desires, and then they feed that information into their verification flows. It tends to be companies that are providing IP or chips, as opposed to companies that are doing their own products.

GS: With it being open-sourced, have you had very many contributors to help add and enhance the product?

WS: There have been a couple contributors to it. I wouldn’t say there are very many contributors.

GS: Have any of them gotten back to you as far as any success they’ve had with your tool? Any successful stories that they’ve told you about?

WS: I know it’s been adapted and continues to be used. I don’t think there have been any published accounts of commercial success stories. In the open-source world, there is not really any push for a marketing success story; it’s not like they are with the commercial people as Vregs lacks a marketing department. Once companies have adopted it, as far as I know, they continue to use it.

GS: I noticed on LinkedIn that you were part of Veripool. That’s your own company that you’ve created for this and for all your tools and stuff.

WS: There are many contributors, but yes, I hold the company.

GS: So, you’re no longer with Veripool, Is Vreg owned by Veripool or what’s the status on that?

WS: I have the primary copyrights since I wrote most of the code, but it’s under the GNU license, GPL.

GS: You’re with Cavium Networks right now. Does Vregs and the other tools belong to Cavium? Or is that just a side thing that you’re doing?

WS: The tools on Veripool have been designed by people as part of their normal jobs with an agreement with each company that they can be released to the open-sourced world. In terms of my working on those tools, it’s been to accomplish what was needed for each company, and the companies that I work for have seen the value of making it open-sourced. Other companies contribute to it, and get value out of it.

GS: Okay, what else can you tell me about your tool?

WS: It’s much more of a framework in the sense of it provides standardized classes and ways of getting data from documentation, and it provides functions and template files for extracting that information and making code. For example, it has default ways of making C defines, and default ways of making C classes, C++ classes, enumerations, and those sorts of things. But it’s designed as something that can be easily extended. You can easily make your own out-puters that generate code.

GS: What is used to write it? Is it C++ that’s behind it or…

WS: It’s all Perl-based.

GS: Then, anybody with Perl knowledge can work on this, enhance it, then?

WS: Right. Most people obviously, as with any program, copy samples even if they don’t program much. It’s not that hard to pick up the example that does what you want and poke at it until you get what you want out. And, like most open-sourced tools—to be honest—the assumption is that the people who are using it are willing to invest a little bit of time to understand the documentation and get it to do what they want. Which is opposed to buying a company product where they expect you to come in and give training and more or less get the purchaser set up without them having to invest much time.

GS: How long has Vregs been out? I noticed you were with Veripool for ten years.

WS: Wow, interesting—the first release was in June, 2001. Vregs has been out for ten years.

GS: That’s all the questions I have for now. Thank you very much for your time.

WS: My pleasure.

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