Still a newbie…
for version saving of a project, it seems that the hardcore believe the best practice is a full blown git version control. If that is beyond what i want/need, is there an ‘almost best’ practice for saving versions? The user manual is completely silent on saving versions.
i would just like to old-school "save as " with a new version number. Is this a reasonable expectation and at all possible? what are the easiest solutions to just make incremental versions in case i discover i was mentally impaired when i did the last set of changes.
reading the forum and online, one common technique seems to be to do a grab of the entire directory to save as a restore point. Is that really the simplest method to create a restore point?
i see CADLAB.io has a git version control for KiCAD as well as others but this is probably way over the top for what i am looking for (and i prefer to save all my files locally) https://cadlab.io/git-version-control-for/kicad
Git isn’t as hard as it looks. You can start with a local repo and about half a dozen commands. Then you can expand your knowledge from there. Just search for crash courses on Git.
One low-tech idea is you could use the archive project plugin (found with other plugins here) with zip. I don’t recall if running the plugin a second time (or more) after making changes will prune out any assets that are no longer used.
If it does, then simply run the plugin. Zip the project folder and add any details to the zip filename that will help you (version number, archive date, phase of the moon, etc…).
If the plugin doesn’t prune unused assets then first zip the project to a temporary place. Run the plugin and then zip the project folder like above. Then delete the project files and restore from the temporary zip file.
I doubt this is THE best way. But it is a way, and as long as you know how to zip/unzip files, move files and folders, etc. then it should work.
(All zipping actions above are done at the filesystem level with KiCad not running just for safety. And it doesn’t have to be zip, just use your favorite folder archiving tool, 7zip, tar, lha, zoom, etc.)
I wrote a bash script that backs up files. For example, type $bu filename.txt and the script copies filename.txt to filename.txt.bk1 if it doesn’t exist. If filename.txt.bk1 already exists, then the script moves filename.txt.bk1 to filename.txt.bk2 and then copies filename.txt to filename.txt.bk1. And so on, so that up to then ten backup files filename.txt.bk1, filename.txt.bk2, filename.txt.bk3, …filename.txt.bk10. I use this script to back up files that write to often, through text editor, through gnumeric, through open-office writer, etc. It works on any type of file, not just text files.
The other method I use with kicad is to “clone a project”, which kicker recently asked about in this thread How to clone a project
The “clone a project” method ( CAP ) involves copying a set of existing kicad project file that resides in its own subdirectory, say PSU1, which
you already have working satisfactorily to a new
subdirectory PSU2, which is in essence a genetically-identical twin of PSU1. You can also regard PSU2 as a backup of PSU1–until you change it with kicad. PSU2 simply has copies of files psu1.sch and psu1.brd in its PSU2/ subdirectory named psu2.sch and psu2.brd, along with all the kicad files your PSU1 project needs.
So far I have only used the CAP method to make copies of my one kicad project. This is because I like to experiment by changing of things that already work to make an experimental version for test purposes.
With these two methods I don’t feel a need to keep a git cheat-sheet taped to my computer.
When saving the archive, I am just giving the archive a unique numerical sequential name. I presume this is doing what I want, but I have not actually restored from the archive.
It creates a zip file of all the files in the project PLUS all subdirectories, including their files, stored in the subdirectory where the .pro file lives.
It is simple. It is straightforward. I like it. It is better than my second method I mentioned previously. I can easily copy the zip file into a new foldername and treat it as an independent clone of the project taken at some date and time in the past, should I so choose to do.
I restored a copy of my project using this method. It works great, and simply.
I will use this method when I get to a point in the project where it works fine and before I start revising the project, either schematic or PCB, or footprints used therein.