Pin Name Aliasing Request (from phdl-support)

E-mail from user
Name: Roderick Mann
Subject: Pin name aliasing?
Email: rmann@...
Message Content:

When I work with MCUs, there's a lot of overloading of pin functions. Is there any way to define a device pin to have more than one name, and let any be used in the design? And perhaps optionally emit warnings when two different names are used in the same design (this may or may not be intentional).

This would allow me to use the name "MOSI" for a SPI bus pin, instead of portB[5], if I'm using SPI in that design. Makes it more clear with a glance what's going on. I suppose the net name helps here.

Which brings up something else: it might be nice to not specify a net name (or to specify it in-line). For example, I had to make a net for the two crystal oscillator connections to the MCU. It would've been nice to just specify in one instance or the other that one pin is connected to another, and let PHDL generate a net name for that connection.