How important is preserving comments?
We think it is very important. In a complex code, comments are crucial to the maintenance of the design because they tell you the “why”. For example, consider a part of a design which delays clock by three cycles. That much is obvious from the code. But why? In any non-trivial code the answer may not be easy without comments. The HDL Translator preserves all comments, and somewhat preserves formatting. As an unexpected byproduct, it also preserves coding style. Often you can tell who wrote the original code.
How important is preserving comments?