solved no backward compatibility, dxf2gcode -version missing

[zimbodel]

I have two issues that byte me every time I have to upgrade my Linux distro this runs on.

1) It is really quite tedious to change all the config file parameters to make dxf2gcode work with my Isel CNC machines.
Once configured, it works very nicely.
However, for some mysterious reason, dx2gcode newer versions are almost never backward compatible with previous version config files.
I usually get an error message that I have to "carefully edit my config files for the new version"
This is a painful process every time.

Question: Why not just make the config files backward compatible. I mean it makes a lot of sense as users with custom configs has quite extensive config changes.

2) Why is there no Version for dxf2gcode in Help about ?
Technically there should, since when dxf2gcode, as newly installed is started, then it tells you that you have version-X config files, but you need to edit them for expected Version-Y.
Since your error messages in dxf2gcode refers to version numbers, it is obvious that you should display version number of the software in about:config.

To make matters worse, the .deb binary does not have any recognizable version remotely related to the version numbers as stated in the error messages for the software.

 

[chrisko]

Hi Zimbodel,

thank you for your feedback and i will try to address them in a future update.

1.) In general all versions are backwards compatible if you know which parameter has been changed in the config. All version updates are just due to the fact that one parameter may have been added, thats all. It may be possible in future releases to check if a parameter has been added and just create an new version based on the old one and only add the default for the new parameter. But this may take some effort and time ...

2.) In former time we used svn to configure the versions but since we changed to git the process changed. However the version refered to are version of the config file version which are just created "by hand" and thats what we can do directly for any next update. We will tell you which parameter has been added and you can at least modify the old file to add the missing value to make it easier ...

regards
Christian

 

[zimbodel]

That sounds great Thanks !
It really is a pain to upgrade having to recreate the entire config every time.