Save PB project files as text instead of binary

Paquet Builder
1

Hello,

Is this possible to provide a way to save PB3 project files as text instead of binary? This would make changes & reviews easier for collaborative work using a source code control system.

Thanks.

2

Project files are actually Zip archives: for instance, you can open them in 7-Zip. Then all files inside the project are in text format (especially XML).

3

Thanks for this information. I can indeed see the 7 XML files in the project-archive. The problem is that we can’t see a way to work directly with these XML files in our code repository. The only solution I can see is to take the following steps when we modify the .pbpx project:

  1. after saving the .pbpx, unzip it in our repository
  2. commit the changed .xml files
  3. generate the .pbpx file from scripts when we want to edit or build the project

We have 2 problems including the .pbpx file directly in our code repository as we do now:

  1. it is not possible to make code reviews since it is a binary file
  2. we cannot merge this .pbpx file when 2 developers had to do modify it in 2 separated branches

Do you think it would be possible to add a feature like “Save as XML” in Paquet Builder IDE? Or perhaps make the .pbpx file pure XML by default and directly usable in PB?

4

Sure, having a pure XML project could certainly be feasible. We’ll study this possibility.