Are There Realistic/Useful Solutions for Source Control for Ladder Logic Programs

Posted by Steven A. Lowe on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Steven A. Lowe
Published on 2011-08-20T03:30:20Z Indexed on 2012/06/02 16:48 UTC
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version-control

Version control for ladder logic (LL) programs for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) seems to be virtually non-existent. It may be because LL is a visual language and tends to be stored in binary files, or it may be because source code control hasn't "caught on" in process control engineering circles - or perhaps my Google-Fu is weak tonight.

Do you know of any realistic and useful solutions for version control for such systems?

Definitions:

realistic = changes to the programs are tracked by user and subject to reversion and merges
useful = the system integrates with visual LL designers, is not limited to LL from a single PLC manufacturer, and does not cost a ridiculous amount of money?

Note: I have heard of people using SVN or Mercurial et al to track the binary files, but I don't think the diff/merge capabilities would display readable differences.

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