With Pcbnew I have the option to “Save Copy as…” which is quite interesting to save an intermediate working state, or something that still needs to be rearranged a bit.
I even used that to have an R1 file, just to make sure that in case of an R2 one I still have it shelved.
However, working on the schematics there’s no similar option, and the “Save as…” switches the current sheet to the new one saved.
Well, it’s true that changing a design could mean having a new project, so it would be better copying the directory and working on the new one. There are times however when I’m just pondering on a single resistor or jumper placement, and in the while I want everything to stay together.
Is my thinking awkward? Is there some way to help keep working on incremental changed projects?
Is there a backup feature with an helper to store/retrieve “current state” back and forth to some archive directory?
You should probably use a version control system like SVN or git. Quite many users of KiCad use it with git. You don’t have to know much about git to get the benefits for your workflow – you need to create and switch branches.
@eelik That would be fine, I already use VCS like SVN/Hg/etc. since long time on embedded software; I just wondered if there was already something supported or widely used, before reinventing the wheel
Thanks!
KiCad tries to be VCS friendly on purpose, there have been changes in 5.99 (the unstable development version) which fix some annoyances. In 5.1 for example UI state has been mixed with design data and editing certain things makes unnecessary changes to line order. But git has been used with KiCad for a long time successfully. Collaboration, i.e. merging changes, doesn’t work, but versioning is easy and works well.