[Robotics] Verson Control of .blend files

[Benoit Bolsee]

Production team use library blend files: many small blend containing
only 1 item.
As you guessed, merging is not possible with blend file, so no concurent
access is possible.
If you have large script on which concurent access should be possible,
my suggestion is that you put them outside the blend file. Blender
allows to use external files for scripts. The script file can then
support concurent access and merging under SVN.

Regarding the name conflict when appending items, you should use link
item and not append. This keeps the name. Trouble with linked item is
that you cannot parent them but I indicated on this list a way to work
around that using Dupligroup instantiation that should give equivalent
results.

I any case I suggest you have a look at this software:
 http://sidedish.atmind.nl/

It should be adapted to your situation: it allows to visualize
complicated connections between blend files. 

Regards,
Benoit


> -----Original Message-----
> From: robotics-bounces at blender.org 
> [mailto:robotics-bounces at blender.org] On Behalf Of Gilberto Echeverria
> Sent: lundi 9 novembre 2009 18:37
> To: robotics at blender.org
> Subject: [Robotics] Verson Control of .blend files
> 
> 
> Hello everybody,
> 
> We are now a bit further in the development of the 
> openRobotSimulator on 
> Blender, working with two developers. We have a fair amount of 
> components defined, each of them in separate .blend files.
> The idea is to be able to store each component separately (sensors, 
> robotic parts, cameras, etc.) and put them together into a new .blend 
> file to assemble any particular kind of robot.
> 
> It is at this point that we come to face two problems:
> 
> 1. Maintaining a consistent repository of the .blend files
> We are currently using a repository in Launchpad, using 
> bazaar. This is 
> now creating a problem, since there doesn't seem to be any 
> change merger 
> inside of the .blend files, because they are binary files. So working 
> concurrently makes change control a problem. This applies to changes 
> both to the python scripts inside the blender files, as well 
> as to the 
> 3D models of the components.
> How do the Blender Foundation projects keep track of their files? For 
> instance for the films and games developed in Blender.
> 
> 2. To create a new robot, we do 'appends' of the component 
> pieces. For example, append a camera to a robot. If the same 
> process is repeated, the new objects for the robot and 
> components get new names like robot.001, camera.001, along with the 
> scripts and textures associated to them. This creates a lot 
> of problems 
> with the python scripts, since they have to guess the new names. Is 
> there a way to keep things like scripts and materials as 
> links shared by 
> several objects?
> 
> I hope my questions are not too confusing. Any help with this 
> problems 
> will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> All the best
> 
> Gilberto
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