Diff tool for Schematics and Layout using Git

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Hi guys.

I am working on a simple tool (called kdiff) to make the review process on git changes easier.

I am discussing a lot with @John_Pateman since this is kind of his idea for the next version of his Kicad-Diff. While this doesn’t happen, I am making this tool that is a working mockup to evaluate the idea.

It also generates diffs for schematics using @jnavila Plotgitsch

This is the repo https://github.com/leoheck/kdiff in case anyone is interested to experiment with it.

It is possible to iterate commits, schematic pages, and layout layers using keyboard shortcuts so the review process is pretty much smooth.

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMC0USSsbDE

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How does Jnavila’s Plotgitsch work ? Is it much different from a plain vanilla command line diff ?

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Plotgitsch works by generating visual diff images as this image here.

image
image1126×795 130 KB

It falls back to the textual diff when images do not have differences.

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the tool is great…
for pcb files, also Gerber Viewer could simply help doing an XOR of the gerber layers…
Unfortunately KiCAD Gerbview is not offering this option ATM.
gEDA Gerbv has instead this option available.

1596×1222 197 KB

There is an opened issue at the kicad code, but it is not on top priorities …
it is marked on whishlist, but IMO it is an important feature to be added to KiCAD GerbView.

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maui, thanks for this info.

I make a demo video with this tool working.
Take a look, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMC0USSsbDE

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LabVIEW (a graphical programming language) had similar approach: a tool to highlight the differences in conflicting merges. With it is possible to change he configurations on .gitconfig file for the software file extensions use this tool instead the text diff tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVRKQCDeDjc

we could provide this kind of Git integration.

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Hey guys. kdiff is working under Windows too with WSL now.

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