On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 21:08 +0000, Steve Wiseman wrote:
> On Tue Jan 27 20:38 , Peter Clifton  sent:
> 
> >How do commercial tools deal with this?
> 
> Poorly :)
> Altium bolts up to Subversion, but its hard going. The inevitable problems are
> inevitable. Fortunately, storage space is getting cheaper, but my working
> repository (I do stuff other than Balloon) is just under 1TByte. 

I thought Altium used a binary database for its designs.. in that case,
you're probably not getting much benefit of the revision control
system's compression between revisions - as far as I know, most only
work well with text.

Just having re-read.. 1TByte. WTF??

Granted my design isn't as big as yours, and possibly doesn't track
_all_ history, but for the power converter logic boards for a wave power
plant I'm working on only total 1.3G!

Ok, the firmware files so far total 5.8G, even if a great portion of
that is generated cruft which isn't under revision control.

> >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.
> 
> It certainly works in my world, since I work in small teams (often just me). I
> would hate to try to enforce version control on a multi-person project. Then
> again, multi-person projects normally move far more slowly than standalone stuff. 

[snip]

> Per-sheet of schematic would be tolerable. Once the PCB was started, things would
> get tricky. I do find that running the tail end of the schematic design in
> parallel with the start of the PCB maximises the efficiency, as appropriate
> changes can be inserted for free. I can't see that working well with automated
> tools, compared to shouting across the lab and checking changes off on a whiteboard. 

Do you ever work with more than one person working on a board layout at
once? If so.. how? (Is the board modular enough that you could have
engineers working on different areas, then paste them together?)

Much of my stuff is fairly modular (once layout is starting to get
nailed down), but I'm also the only person working on it.

I'm presuming that that having multiple workstations tracking (perahaps
even making) live changes to two views onto same layout, would be
pointless - as fun as the idea sounds..

> >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.
> 
> Yes. This is hard, with a capital H. I'm not sure it's possible, and I'm very
> sure that gEDA has more profitable fish to fry. This one's a stinker. 

Indeed.

> >Quick question.. are the majority of Balloon developers / users Linux,
> >Windows or Mac OS users on their primary desktop / development
> >platforms? 
> 
> I'm resolutely Windows, for EDA stuff. Altium/Protel, LTSpice and Modelsim for
> simulation, Xilinx and Altera tools for FPGAs. Random programming widgets, random
> microcontroller development environments, Solidworks (and Turbocad - spit) for
> mechanical. I fear that Linux is a no-show.

I find the Xilinx tools work well under Linux (well, as well as
usual ;)), and have had no problem programming devices. For mechanical
cad, I use Pro Engineer - although they have now dropped Linux support.
There is QCad for 2D stuff, but I don't tend to use it.

LTSpice -> Ngspice or gnucap (but it won't be nearly as friendly, and
you might need to fight the models somewhat).

Modelsim (don't know it - is it a PSpice-alike?)

Linux isn't for everyone.. Let me mail you a link to the gEDA windows
beta build, to give it a play. Personally, I think the schematic editor
is quite decent.. its mainly the integrated workflow we need to focus
on.

> For what little software I do, and what text editing I do, then it's Linux.
> Documentation is OS agnostic. Web browsing / datasheet rummaging is mostly
> Windows, as my serious machine is Windows.


> Linux support for serious monitors and
> graphics cards is too hard for me to feel the need to cope with.

Know that feeling.. my new laptop took a little hacking to make work
just right.. and I'm using Intel graphics, which has fairly good open
source drivers. My serious monitor is an HP LP2475w, which I just
bought. Works fine - but then again, I am tracking the very latest
driver code available.

> If I had a horde of minions to try suff, I'd probably move more towards Linux,
> but, at the moment, I'm getting more done using tools that run under Windows.
> (Note - the OS is, pretty much, an irrelevance. It launches the apps I want and
> provides the device drivers I want. The UI and built-in stuff are trivial.

There's a sensible view on the world. I find I'm most productive in
Linux - I do a lot of software work, so thats where I stay mostly. I do
venture into Windows sometimes though.. to test the gEDA port.

-- 
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!)