Git with Lader logic

Hi 

I am trying to find a way of using version control on PLC programmers like Allen Bradley PLC. I can't find a way of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with Plc programs. Which are basically Ladder logic.

Sent from my iPad

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 11:33:54PM +0000, Bharat Suvarna wrote:

Hi 

I am trying to find a way of using version control on PLC programmers like Allen Bradley PLC. I can't find a way of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with Plc programs. Which are basically Ladder logic.

I'm not familiar with these programs, so I can't give you specific
advice about this.

Although git is not very picky about the contents, it is optimized to
track text files. Things like showing diffs and merging files only works
on text files.

Git can track binary files, but there are some disadvantages:

- Diff / merge doesn't work well
- Compression is often difficult, so the repository size may grow
  depending on the size of the things stored

These disadvantages are not limited to only git, other SCM systems also
have to deal with these problems.

So if the Ladder logic is represented as text source, there is no
problem with it. If it'sbinary, there might be other sollutions better
suited.

Kevin

On March 17, 2015 7:34 PM, Bharat Suvarna wrote:

I am trying to find a way of using version control on PLC programmers like

Allen

Bradley PLC. I can't find a way of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with Plc programs. Which

are

basically Ladder logic.

Many PLC programs either store their project code in XML, L5K or L5X (for
example), TXT, CSV, or some other text format or can import and export to
text forms. If you have a directory structure that represents your project,
and the file formats have reasonable line separators so that diffs can be
done easily, git very likely would work out for you. You do not have to have
the local .git repository in the same directory as your working area if your
tool has issues with that or .gitignore. You may want to use a GUI client to
manage your local repository and handle the commit/push/pull/merge/rebase
functions as I expect whatever PLC system you are using does not have git
built-in.

To store binary PLC data natively, which some tools use, I expect that those
who are better at git-conjuring than I, could provide guidance on how to
automate binary diffs for your tool's particular file format.

Cheers,
Randall
-- Brief whoami: NonStop&UNIX developer since approximately
UNIX(421664400)/NonStop(211288444200000000)
-- In my real life, I talk too much.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 2:53 PM, Randall S. Becker
[off-list ref] wrote:

On March 17, 2015 7:34 PM, Bharat Suvarna wrote:

quoted

I am trying to find a way of using version control on PLC programmers like

Allen

quoted

Bradley PLC. I can't find a way of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with Plc programs. Which

are

quoted

basically Ladder logic.

Many PLC programs either store their project code in XML, L5K or L5X (for
example), TXT, CSV, or some other text format or can import and export to
text forms. If you have a directory structure that represents your project,
and the file formats have reasonable line separators so that diffs can be
done easily, git very likely would work out for you. You do not have to have
the local .git repository in the same directory as your working area if your
tool has issues with that or .gitignore. You may want to use a GUI client to
manage your local repository and handle the commit/push/pull/merge/rebase
functions as I expect whatever PLC system you are using does not have git
built-in.

To store binary PLC data natively, which some tools use, I expect that those
who are better at git-conjuring than I, could provide guidance on how to
automate binary diffs for your tool's particular file format.

The one thing I find interesting about RSLogix in general (caveat: I
only have very limited experience with RSLogix 500 / 5000; if I do
anything nowadays, it's in the micro series using RSLogix Micro
Starter Lite)... they do have some limited notion of version control
inside the application itself, though it seems rudimentary to me.
This could prove to be helpful or extremely annoying, since even when
I connect to a PLC and go online, just to reset the RTC, it still
prompts me to save again (even though nothing changed, other than the
processor state).

You may also find this link on stackexchange helpful:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102487/are-there-realistic-useful-solutions-for-source-control-for-ladder-logic-program

As Randall noted, L5K is just text, and RSLogix 5000 uses it,
according to this post.  It may work okay.

--Doug

On March 18, 2015 6:29 PM Doug Kelly wrote:

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 2:53 PM, Randall S. Becker
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On March 17, 2015 7:34 PM, Bharat Suvarna wrote:

quoted

I am trying to find a way of using version control on PLC programmers
like

Allen

quoted

Bradley PLC. I can't find a way of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with Plc programs.
Which

are

quoted

basically Ladder logic.

Many PLC programs either store their project code in XML, L5K or L5X
(for example), TXT, CSV, or some other text format or can import and
export to text forms. If you have a directory structure that
represents your project, and the file formats have reasonable line
separators so that diffs can be done easily, git very likely would
work out for you. You do not have to have the local .git repository in
the same directory as your working area if your tool has issues with
that or .gitignore. You may want to use a GUI client to manage your
local repository and handle the commit/push/pull/merge/rebase
functions as I expect whatever PLC system you are using does not have git

built-in.

quoted

To store binary PLC data natively, which some tools use, I expect that
those who are better at git-conjuring than I, could provide guidance
on how to automate binary diffs for your tool's particular file format.

The one thing I find interesting about RSLogix in general (caveat: I only have
very limited experience with RSLogix 500 / 5000; if I do anything nowadays, it's
in the micro series using RSLogix Micro Starter Lite)... they do have some
limited notion of version control inside the application itself, though it seems
rudimentary to me.
This could prove to be helpful or extremely annoying, since even when I
connect to a PLC and go online, just to reset the RTC, it still prompts me to save
again (even though nothing changed, other than the processor state).

You may also find this link on stackexchange helpful:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102487/are-there-
realistic-useful-solutions-for-source-control-for-ladder-logic-program

As Randall noted, L5K is just text, and RSLogix 5000 uses it, according to this
post.  It may work okay.

A really good reason to use git instead of some other systems is that new versions of files are determined by SHA signatures (real differences) rather than straight timestamps. So saving a file that has not changed will not force a new version - unlike some systems that shall remain nameless.

Thanks all .. I will have a look. But could I just set this up on my laptop and checking this works on system first before installing one of Git on server

Sent from my iPhone

On 18 Mar 2015, at 22:28, Doug Kelly [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 2:53 PM, Randall S. Becker
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On March 17, 2015 7:34 PM, Bharat Suvarna wrote:

quoted

I am trying to find a way of using version control on PLC programmers like

Allen

quoted

Bradley PLC. I can't find a way of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with Plc programs. Which

are

quoted

basically Ladder logic.

Many PLC programs either store their project code in XML, L5K or L5X (for
example), TXT, CSV, or some other text format or can import and export to
text forms. If you have a directory structure that represents your project,
and the file formats have reasonable line separators so that diffs can be
done easily, git very likely would work out for you. You do not have to have
the local .git repository in the same directory as your working area if your
tool has issues with that or .gitignore. You may want to use a GUI client to
manage your local repository and handle the commit/push/pull/merge/rebase
functions as I expect whatever PLC system you are using does not have git
built-in.

To store binary PLC data natively, which some tools use, I expect that those
who are better at git-conjuring than I, could provide guidance on how to
automate binary diffs for your tool's particular file format.

The one thing I find interesting about RSLogix in general (caveat: I
only have very limited experience with RSLogix 500 / 5000; if I do
anything nowadays, it's in the micro series using RSLogix Micro
Starter Lite)... they do have some limited notion of version control
inside the application itself, though it seems rudimentary to me.
This could prove to be helpful or extremely annoying, since even when
I connect to a PLC and go online, just to reset the RTC, it still
prompts me to save again (even though nothing changed, other than the
processor state).

You may also find this link on stackexchange helpful:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102487/are-there-realistic-useful-solutions-for-source-control-for-ladder-logic-program

As Randall noted, L5K is just text, and RSLogix 5000 uses it,
according to this post.  It may work okay.

--Doug

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 07:14:52AM +0000, Bharat Suvarna wrote:

Thanks all .. I will have a look. But could I just set this up on my laptop and checking this works on system first before installing one of Git on server

Sure, that's no problem. Git happily runs just locally on your own
machine and does not depend on a server.

Bharat Suvarna <bharat.bs84 <at> icloud.com> writes:

Hi 

I am trying to find a way of using version control on 

PLC programmers like Allen Bradley PLC. I 
can't find a way

of this.

Could you please give me an idea if it will work with 

Plc programs. Which are basically Ladder 
logic.

Sent from my iPad--
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I use Git for versioning PLC program written for Beckhoff TwinCAT v2 that 
saves the files in binary format.  
You can probably do the same for most other systems as well.   
  
My way of doing it is... 
I have a batch file that starts TwinCAT including a file that tell Twincat to
open my PLC program and export it into a text based format. 
After that the script opens git gui and gitk.  
  
I have one script like this for each plc program. 
It is quite effcient, the whole procedure only takes a double click and 
less than 10 seconds and you have git gui up and you can see your 
changes in pure text, commit and push.   
I commit both the exported text files and the binary  because the binary
is the one I edit.   
This has been working very well for many years....
  
Take care   
Martin