added initial Readme; tweaked copyright notice

LICENSE

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Copyright for portions of sv2v are held by Tom Hawkins, 2011-2015, as part of
-tomahawkins/verilog. All other copyright for sv2v are held by Zachary Snow,
-2018.
+tomahawkins/verilog. Copyright for all other portions of sv2v are held by
+Zachary Snow, 2019.
 
 All rights reserved.
 

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+# sv2v: SystemVerilog to Verilog
+
+sv2v is a tool for converting synthesizable SystemVerilog into Verilog that is
+synthesizable by tools with more limited feature sets. This project was
+originally created for converting SystemVerilog into the [limited subset of
+Verilog] supported by [VTR]. However, sv2v is intended to be configurable and
+extensible so that it can be used with new and different toolchains and as
+Verilog keyword support evolves.
+
+[limited subset of Verilog]: https://vtr-verilog-to-routing.readthedocs.io/en/latest/odin/index.html#verilog-hdl-file-keyword-support
+[VTR]: https://github.com/verilog-to-routing/vtr-verilog-to-routing
+
+
+## Installation
+
+### Pre-built binaries
+
+Given the infamy of Haskell's build system, we aim to release pre-built binaries
+and installation files. This has not been done yet.
+
+### Building from source
+
+You must have [Stack] installed to build sv2v.
+
+[Stack]: https://www.haskellstack.org/
+
+```
+git clone https://github.com/zachjs/sv2v
+cd sv2v
+stack setup
+make
+```
+
+This creates the executable at `./bin/sv2v`
+
+
+## Usage
+
+The interface for this tool has not yet been finalized. Currently, running
+`bin/sv2v path/to/file.sv` will output the converted file to `stdout`.
+
+
+## SystemVerilog Parser/AST
+
+This project contains a basic preprocessor, lexer, parser, and abstract syntax
+tree for a subset of synthesizable SystemVerilog. The parser is not extremely
+strict, and the AST allows for the representation of syntactically (and
+semantically) invalid Verilog. The goal is to be more general in the
+representation to enable more standardized and straightforward conversion
+procedures. This could be extended into an independent and more fully-featured
+parer if there is significant interest.
+
+
+## License
+
+See the LICENSE file for copyright and licensing information.