Hi Jason! David is right, I don't know PCSWMM either and you didn't provide any information about the *file format* used/generated by this software. And I second what David says: the way to go is to "version control" the source files ; we don't care about output files much because generally we don't want to put them under version control, since we are able to re-generate all of them from the source files.
If your *source* files are in binary format, then you're in the same situation as mine: I work everyday with binary files of ~10Mo and Subversion really works well for that. If you're interested I wrote a blog article discussing the use of SVN or Git in the Electronic/Mechanical engineering context <https://gotomation.info/2020/01/svn-or-git-with-solidworks/#which-one-is-good-for-solidworks> (CAD files). Unfortunately, with binary files you will generally miss the "diff" feature which David talked about. Unless your software supports a "file comparison" feature! Example: Altium Designer (electronic CAD) <https://gotomation.info/2019/02/file-comparison-altium-designer/#with-tortoisesvn-from-the-windows-explorer> Even MS Office files can be diff'ed quite easily <https://gotomation.info/2019/01/svn-version-control-office-documents/#difference-between-two-versions-of-a-file> ;-) Hope it helps. Justin MASSIOT | Zentek On Thu, 9 Sept 2021 at 23:29, David Chapman <dcchap...@acm.org> wrote: > On 9/9/2021 1:53 PM, Jason Kimmet wrote: > > Subversion Users, > > We are working on a large stormwater modeling program where we will be > keeping track of a lot of PCSWMM file type models. We are exploring version > management options and have come across the SVN community. I understand > this is great for text-style files, however, I would like to know if you > have seen users utilize this for engineering plans such as PCSWMM? > > Many version control systems, Subversion included, work best when the new > version of a file looks much the same as the previous version. Otherwise > you could be storing multiple full versions of the files. > > Some features of Subversion (like "show lines that changed") aren't > available for binary files, but if the changes in a binary file are limited > to specific sections, you still get space-saving benefits in the > repository; see http://help.collab.net/index.jsp?topic=/faq/svnbinary.html > and https://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.forcvs.binary-and-trans.html > (both links are old, but binary file handling shouldn't be worse now than > then). > > A quick search didn't tell me anything about the PCSWMM format; how much > of a file changes between model runs? Is it text or binary? Are the files > very large (gigabytes or more)? Are they inputs to software, or outputs? > Generally it is assumed that output files can be recreated given the full > input configuration, so program outputs are often left out of the > repository. > -- > > David Chapman dcchap...@acm.org > Chapman Consulting -- San Jose, CA > EDA Software Developer, Expert Witness > www.chapman-consulting-sj.com > 2018-2019 Chair, IEEE Consultants' Network of Silicon Valley > >
