My employer is a small company having got that way as a result of several contractions from a mid-size organization. As a result we have inherited the documentation methods without many of the resources to support them. Included in this is ISO9000 certification.

Altium recommends using a version control system (VCS) for projects and it would seem to me that if the pcbs, schematics and source/object code etc are under version control, then all other documentation like test procedures should be included as well.

Unfortunately I have no experience in any VCS and I have several questions that I need answers to and I would hate to implement a system only to discover that it won’t work at the end. I am currently looking at using SubVersion, one of the VCSs that Altium will support.

Any input would be much appreciated.

1. Our ISO procedures require that any change be described in an ECN and approved before the change is implemented and there must be an audit trail. As I understand it SubVersion only allows “notes” that accompany any update that is checked-in (committed) to the repository (database). It seems to me that the only way I can meet ISO is to commit the ECN to the repository as well. Is there any way that it can be done directly in SubVersion?

2. Discussions on this forum and elsewhere seem to indicate that there must be an “administrator” of the database. Obviously the administrator would be the one to create a repository, but I am unclear as to what the other functions he/she would fulfill.
a) Can anyone commit to the repository?
b) I assume anyone can check out any file
c) Can anyone generate a branch or tag (which is how one creates a release, as I understand it)
d) what are the other functions performed by the administrator?

3. SubVersion appears to only work through a command line interface. It seems to me that Altium would work as a shell to SubVersion and although I am sure Altium would work for any file, not everyone here has an Altium seat. TortoiseSVN is also a shell for SubVersion. Am I correct in assuming that TortoiseSVN and Altium are compatible (i.e. they can operate on the same database possibly at the same time)?

4. I have seen mention that SubVersion only has a single overall revision level (which is numeric). I have also seen that SubVersion allows you to somehow denote the revision of each file.
a) Does SubVersion have that ability to use specific versions of a file in a build?
b) Does SubVersion have the ability to report which specific vesion of a file was used in a build?

Thanks
-Aubrey