Version Control

Another good question that was left unanswered. 

My advise on this topic is that you should probably look at a version control tool with the most basic functionality; check in and out files, and keep history of the checkin comments. 

For work methodology, you might want to consider using the .idsx file format on the main project file for frequent checkins while you are working on updates, and then manually step the project version in IQANdesign and save as .idax when you have a release candidate. 

I think it is also good to have a method for tracking the versions of the file you then release to production, for example a feature to set status in the version control tool.

If you are multiple developers working on the same project, or if you have functionality that is reused on different machine models it is really beneficial to organize the project file so it uses idex files to external function files.

Thanks for your reply! 

For now I made a simple tool myself where I can save the file, make a short description and save all in a zip file with the click of a button. But still looking for a better tool, so if there is a more 'professional' tool which works as described above, I like to hear about it.

Thanks!

We use git and then save a txt file of the project and check that in as well as the idsx file.  This helps to have something to diff to verify the changes in each revision.  We then also built a tool to parse the txt file and do diffs to make it easier to navigate.  So our tool can highlight which channels changed and display them in a hierarchy.

Actually IQANdesign has built-in support for showing the difference between two idsx or idax files. With the command line option "-diff" this can be integrated in most version control tools, e.g. 

"C:\Program Files (x86)\IQANdesign 6.06\IQANdesign.exe" "ProjectVersion1.idsx" -diff "ProjectVersion2.idsx"