bluespec.sty

Bluespec SystemVerilog (BSV) support for the LaTeX listings package.

listings ships a Verilog definition, but its vocabulary is Verilog-2001 and shares little with BSV: no rule, method, provisos or deriving, nothing from the standard library, and no handling of (* ... *) attributes. This package defines BSV as a language of its own, with keyword lists taken from bsc 2026.01, and a listings style.

Requirements

LaTeX2e, plus listings and xcolor, which the package loads itself.

Installation

Drop bluespec.sty beside your document, or install it for every document:

mkdir -p "$(kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFHOME)/tex/latex/bluespec"
cp bluespec.sty "$(kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFHOME)/tex/latex/bluespec/"

Usage

\usepackage{bluespec}

\lstset{style=bsv, basicstyle=\ttfamily\small}
\lstinputlisting{Gcd.bsv}

style=bsv sets the language and colors, and nothing else: no basicstyle, no column model, no frame. It composes with the listings setup the document already has, in either order. That includes the font: listings leaves basicstyle empty by default, which means the surrounding document font, so set \ttfamily yourself or your code comes out in the body serif.

For the language without the colors, ask for it directly. A single keywordstyle covers all five classes, since listings falls back to it for classes that have no style of their own:

\lstset{language=BSV, basicstyle=\ttfamily\small, keywordstyle=\bfseries}

The default option applies style=bsv to every listing in the document, and still leaves the typography to you:

\usepackage[default]{bluespec}
\lstset{basicstyle=\ttfamily\small}

Before v2.0 the language was called {[Bluespec]Verilog}. That name is now an alias for BSV and still works, so existing documents need no edits.

Verify

make -C example

builds example/demo.pdf from example/Gcd.bsv: a whole file, an inline listing, a few \lstinline fragments, and a last section that takes language=BSV without the style, to show that the package paints nothing until it is asked to.

The build from main is published at https://megabyde.github.io/bsv-listings/, so you can see the highlighting before installing anything.

What gets highlighted

Class	Contents	Color
[1]	reserved keywords, and the contextual keywords of import "BVI" bodies, clock and reset declarations and typeclass dependencies	bsvkeyword
[2]	standard library types, typeclasses and package names	bsvtype
[3]	standard library functions, module constructors and interface methods	bsvfunction
[4]	system tasks and functions	bsvsystemtask
[5]	compiler directives	bsvdirective

Attributes are highlighted as a whole, (* and *) included, so attribute names need no keyword list of their own. The delimiter belongs to the style, not to the language, so language=BSV on its own paints nothing at all.

SystemVerilog keywords that BSV reserves but never uses are deliberately absent: highlighting always or wire in BSV code would suggest they mean something.

Customizing

The eight colors are ordinary xcolor names, declared with \providecolor. Define one before loading the package and yours survives; redefine it after and it takes effect from that point:

\definecolor{bsvtype}{HTML}{2A6099}
\colorlet{bsvsystemtask}{bsvfunction}

bsvdirective and bsvattribute start out the same gold, on the grounds that directives and attributes both address the toolchain rather than the hardware. They are separate names, so they can be split.

Attribute highlighting runs through one command, so it can be changed or dropped without touching the language:

\renewcommand\bsvattributestyle{\itshape}
\renewcommand\bsvattributestyle{}        % plain attributes

Caveats

The style asks for \bfseries on class [1], and Computer Modern has no bold typewriter shape, so LaTeX substitutes the medium weight and the request is silently dropped. \usepackage{lmodern}, or any other font with a bold tt, brings it back; stock Verilog and C listings lose their bold the same way. Color carries the distinction regardless.

Sized literals such as 8'hFF come out with a curly quote under T1 font encoding. Load upquote, as example/demo.tex does, or set upquote=true. Under OT1 both raise \textquotedbl unavailable in encoding OT1, which is why the package leaves the choice to the document.

Class [3] carries library names general enough to collide with your own identifiers: map, head, start, clear, first. Drop the ones that get in the way:

\lstset{deletekeywords=[3]{start, first, clear}}

Keeping up with bsc

The lists are maintained by hand, and they move slowly: between bsc 2026.01 and the following months of main, the keywords and system tasks did not change at all and the library classes gained eleven names. A release or two a year is a handful of additions.

These are the sources in the bsc tree that decide what belongs where:

Class	Source
[1]	src/comp/SystemVerilogKeywords.lhs, where BSV-specific keywords carry the Bluespec38 tag, and src/comp/Parser/BSV/*.lhs for the contextual ones
[2], [3]	src/Libraries, restricted to names the Libraries Reference Guide indexes in doc/libraries_ref_guide; the index is what separates the public API from internal helpers
[4]	the \index{\$...} entries of doc/BSV_ref_guide/BSV_lang.tex
[5]	src/comp/SystemVerilogPreprocess.lhs, restricted to the directives the preprocessor acts on rather than the Verilog ones it merely tolerates

Two rules keep the classes honest. A SystemVerilog keyword that BSV reserves but never uses does not belong in [1], and a library name common enough to collide with ordinary user identifiers (add, count, value) does not belong in [3].

License

MIT; see LICENSE.txt.