What’s the use case and why even to semantic versioning on pcbs?

Semantic versioning for PCBs maks ist simpler so track changes, compatibility, and revisions for a single product. This also maks it simpler to map a pcb revision to a software revision.

GitLab CiCd Setup

Versioning is mainly done in two jobs, one that checks if everything is set accordingly and a second one that generates the gerber files.

Job for validating if placeholder Tag is present

As a precaution to ensure later jobs can operate without any problems, the test in each commit ensure that the placeholder Tag is present and has no spelling error.

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

checkSemanticVersioning:
  image: ubuntu:20.04
  stage: testing
  script:
    - SEARCH_STRING="SemVrsTemp"
    - |
  found=false
  for file in *. kicad_pcb; do
  if grep -q "$SEARCH_STRING" "$file"; then
  echo "placeholder found in $file"
  found=true
  fi
  done
  # Fail the pipeline if the string wasn't found in any file
  if [ "$found" = false ]; then
  echo "Versioning placeholder not found in any . kicad_pcb files"
  exit 1
  fi

Replacing tag and outputting gerber

For generating the gerber file [KiBot](https://github. com/INTI-CMNB/KiBot) is used. Before the KiBot is run to grate the final files, a simple find and replace operation is run, that searches the kicad pcb files and replaces all found placeholders with the Git Tag that triggered the pipeline job.

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

pcb_outputs:
  image: $KICAD_VERSION
  stage: gen_fab
  script:
    - FILE_PATH="*. kicad_pcb"
    - SEARCH_STRING="SemVrsTemp"
    - REPLACE_STRING=$CI_COMMIT_TAG
    # Check if the string exists and replace it if found
    - |
  for file in $FILE_PATH; do
  if grep -q "$SEARCH_STRING" "$file"; then
  echo "Found '$SEARCH_STRING' in $file, replacing it with '$REPLACE_STRING'."
  sed -i "s/$SEARCH_STRING/$REPLACE_STRING/g" "$file" # Replace the string
  else
  echo "String '$SEARCH_STRING' not found in $file."
  fi
  done
  - "[ -f *. kicad_pcb ] && kibot -c output. kibot. yaml"
  - echo BUILD_JOB_ID=$CI_JOB_ID >> CI_JOB_ID. env
  only:
  refs:
    - tags
  artifacts:
  paths:
    - Fabrication/
  reports:
  dotenv: CI_JOB_ID. env

Result

In the first screenshot you cna spot the placeholder tag in the bottom right corner. The placeholder Tag has this size to accommodate for tags liker 1.0.0-alpha or 1.0.0-bete. even though not recommend, to mey research this is a valid approach to do semantic versioning, so i wanted it to be supported, or better not to cause problems.

The outputted gerber files (here visualized in the [Aisler PCB explorer](https://aisler. net/)) shows the git that was used to generate this release and start the GitLab CiCd pipeline.