[Discuss] Github/hardware (Was Re: discuss Digest, Vol 10, Issue 99)

[Windell H. Oskay]

On Mar 26, 2013, at 3:49 PM, Cameron Adamez <cameron at suspectdevices.com> wrote:

> I've had issues pulling change requests for my projects. As there's no way for me to cherry-pick changes and since I haven't started writing a diff program for Eagle files, I've had my board accidentally clobbered or mangled via pull requests. I found the correct settings for binary files for Eagle 5, but pull requests were still arduous after that.


This is actually one of the big improvements in Eagle 6-- the XML file format.  Some other EDA programs (including gEDA and KiCAD) have human-readable, diffable file formats.


Also, github does support visual diffs for images in repositories.  One of the consequences of this is that if you include a current image of the SCH/BRD with each commit, you can use the visual diff even on pure binary files.  
( I've written more about this kind of stuff on my blog, too:  http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/improving-open-source-hardware-visual-diffs/ )


Windell H. Oskay, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
175 San Lazaro Ave, STE 150 
Sunnyvale CA 94086
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/