Versioning

This article is part of the GoldSim Style Guide. For an introduction, please start here.

GoldSim provides the ability to track changes that you have made to your model file. This feature (referred to as versioning) allows you to quickly determine the differences between the current version of your model file and some previous version of the file. Providing this configuration management capability is particularly useful for:

• Coordinating model changes when multiple people can access and modify the model file;
• As a Quality Assurance/Quality Control feature enabling you to demonstrate and document when and what changes have been made to a model file.

We recommend that you carefully plan each change to the model before starting. With this plan in place, increment the version number and write a short description of what you plan to do then make the changes. If you are sharing the new version of the model with someone else to review, append the version number to the model file name.

Don’t try to do too much at once. It is recommended that you take on one task at a time and break complicated tasks into multiple steps, each with their own version increment. For large teams working on a single model, we recommend using a check-in/out process like the one provided in this example.

Keep in mind that you can edit the version description after you create that new version, so this allows you to go back and add detail after making some changes. Typically, it is not fully understood what the changes will involve until carrying them out.