Version management

I work for a company with hundreds of PLCs in the field. There are probably 70-80 S7s in the field.

Each runs the same software, but maybe a different version as different machines come online. We don't have a very good means of doing version management so I was wondering what others do in industry.

As of right now, we have tried normal source code repositories (PVCS, SVN, etc.) but they are meant for uncompiled code. It doesn't seem like there is anything out there meant for PLC code.

We try to put version numbers in the code, but sometimes people forget to up revisions in the code and such. It just makes the whole process complicated.

Discussion on process would be nice.

Thoughts?

One method we use is to include the revision date in the source code file name. As we often update systems or make em do something different depending on customer demands. This helps but is by no means an end all solution. We also use a log book for all PLC changes or programming changes.

For S7 programs we use this DIY method although it still relies on manual updating....


Embed the date of the latest modification in the main Project object name.

Create an STL source file to use as a modification record (after all they're only text files).

Also embed the date of the latest modification in the name of the mod record file.





Add a new section to the mod record on each update.





When archiving ensure the archive file name also contains the date of the latest modification.



..

We are doing like like KRK, but have the log file where we store the archive file,
Nice solution to use the source folder for the logfile, going to introduce that for some customer.

We use the following date format:

2010-01-02_Filename here.ext

Where the date is Year - Month - Day.

In this way a group of files will always sort by revision date.

quadPLC said:

We try to put version numbers in the code, but sometimes people forget to up revisions in the code and such.

Click to expand...

How many people have you got hacking and slashing your plc code ?

L D[AR2 said:

..hacking and slashing your plc code ?

Click to expand...