On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 19:45 +0000, David Bisset wrote:

> This could all be helped by better version tagging and visual differencing
> in design tools, so if you are looking for extensions to make the current
> Open tools more usable in an open hardware environment then this would allow
> more open access to design files because changes (both intentioned and
> accidental) could be more easily checked.

How do commercial tools deal with this?

Integration with / inbuilt revision control software?

If so, does it work with an exclusive checkout / locking, or commit +
merge workflow?

An exclusive checkout work-flow probably suits electronic designs well,
as long as the files being worked on are modular enough that small
pieces can be locked for modification by a given developer.

I don't imagine it would work well with the decentralised, distributed
model which we find works well for open source software development.
(Conflicts tend to be avoided by knowing what other people are working
on, and resolved by merging changes at the commit stage).

We could look at how changes on a schematic could be merged for conflict
resolution, but I suspect the UI would be rather harder than with the
lines of text case.


As for spotting the differences..

Automated visual comparison? (might be more common for layout designs?)
Netlist comparison?          (presumably after extraction, for a layout)
Entity property comparison?


Whilst I realise we can do better, with text-based file formats,
spotting differences with the standard text "diff" tool, allows you to
changes very easily. Sometimes you might need the visual representation
to put it in context though.


Quick question.. are the majority of Balloon developers / users Linux,
Windows or Mac OS users on their primary desktop / development
platforms? 

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)