.. include:: icons.rst

Rule Severity
=============

VSG supports rule severity with two built in levels:  Error and Warning.
The default behavior for most rules is **Error**.
Only the **Error** severity level will result in an exit status of 1.
**Errors** will also be the only errors written to a JUnit XML file if that option is chosen.

The severity level of each rule is indicated with one of the following icons in the rule description:

Warning : |warning|

Error: |error|

The table below summarizes the built-in severities:

+-------------+-----------+-------------+-------+-----------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Name        |  Type     | Exit Status | JUnit | Syntastic | Description                                                   |
+=============+===========+=============+=======+===========+===============================================================+
| Error       | error     |      1      |  Yes  |   ERROR   | A rule which must be fixed.                                   |
+-------------+-----------+-------------+-------+-----------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Warning     | warning   |      0      |  No   |  WARNING  | A rule which should be fixed.                                 |
+-------------+-----------+-------------+-------+-----------+---------------------------------------------------------------+

Configuring Severity Levels
---------------------------

The existing severity level of a rule can be configured.
For example, if you want to change the line length rule, *length_001*, to an **Error** instead of a **Warning**, use the following configuration:

.. code-block:: json

   {
       "rule":{
           "length_001":{
               "severity": "Error"
           }
       }
   }

Defining Severity Levels
------------------------

VSG supports user defined severity level.
Any new severity level will follow the same rules as the severity it is based on.
It will be reported to the screen, but will not be reported in JUnit XML files and will not force an exit status of 1.

To create your own severity level, create a configuration which defines just the severity level following this format:

.. code-block:: json

   {
       "severity":{
           "Future":{
               "type":"warning"
           },
           "Todo":{
               "type":"error"
           }
       }
   }

This configuration defines two new severities:  **Future** and **Todo**.
The **Future** severity is set to the **warning** type.
The **Todo** severity is set to the **error** type.

The newly defined severity levels can then be applied to a rule using a second configuration.

.. code-block:: json

   {
       "rule":{
           "length_001":{
               "severity": "Future"
           }
       }
   }

Apply the defined severity levels by calling both configurations:

.. code-block:: bash

   vsg -c severity.json rule_configuration.json -f fifo.vhd

Rules Which are Warnings by Default
###################################

* :any:`length_001`
* :any:`length_002`
* :any:`length_003`