Introduction
Why Copia?
Copia is a complete source control solution designed for controls engineers that makes Git work with industrial code. Git is a collaborative source control management system that has been used in Software Engineering for over 15 years. It's ubiquitous in the industry and used by millions of software engineers around the world. Copia brings Git to industrial automation.
Benefits
"Why has Git become so popular?" you might ask. Well, consider these use cases...
- No more copy and paste. The standard workflow in controls engineering is to copy and paste files at the start of the workday with something like filename_date.acd. With Git, changes are automatically tracked, and you can store a meaningful revision and its context with the click of the button.
- Diffing and file history. When regressions occur, you can always retrieve the history of a given file and see what changes happened at each revision.
- Who changed that code? Discover a code change and wonder who changed it and why? Git stores this context automatically with each revision.
- Branching and merging. Git provides the ability to "branch" and "merge," which enables multiple people to work on the same file safely without accidentally overwriting each other. We will always warn you before you make a potentially dangerous change.
- Offline changes. Git provides a working model that enables you to make changes without a persistent connection to the internet. You can make changes locally, then merge them later.
- Code Review. Because of git's branching model, it is easy to build safeguards that ensure all code is reviewed before it is saved. We store this review, so you can always have complete context on the discussions that led to a change.
- Code Sharing. We leverage Git's cryptographically generated file references in order to build out a system that enables link-based sharing of not only the most recent version of your code, but also any historical version. Viewable, right in the browser.
... and much, much more. Git has transformed the way that millions of engineers write code, and now we are bringing it to controls engineering.
Git + Controls Code
Copia makes Git work with controls code.
- Vendor File Types. Every vendor leverages different file types which are often difficult to parse. Our product is a thin layer over Git that reads in controls file formats and renders visual IEC61131 formats like Ladder Logic and Function Block Diagram.
- Visual Diffing. Part of what makes Git powerful is its ability to let you understand what changed in each version. We show visual differences to make tracking your changes easier.
- Workflow integration. We also provide a desktop app, which makes it both easy to work with Git and doesn't require you to learn all of Git right away, which can be complicated.
- Hosting. We provide a cloud-based Git server which is necessary to store your files. This makes it so you don't have to set up and provide a Git server yourself.
- And more... We provide support for features that matter to controls engineers, like AOIs and safety features to make Git safer.
With Copia, you get the full power of Git integrated natively with controls code.
Last modified 3mo ago
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