What is tia_projectversionmanager?

TIA Project Version Manager is a desktop application for engineers who program industrial equipment using Siemens TIA Portal, a software tool used to develop the logic that runs programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, the small industrial computers that control machinery in factories. This app gives those engineers a way to take snapshots of their TIA Portal project files over time, much like a version control system, so they can keep a history of changes, restore an older version if something breaks, and compare two versions of a project to see exactly what changed in the underlying code. The application runs entirely on the user's own computer with no cloud service involved, and it is built to be lightweight and portable. To read and compare the actual programming logic inside TIA Portal projects, which are stored in a proprietary format, the tool includes a small companion program written in C sharp that talks directly to Siemens' own TIA Portal software on the machine, exports the PLC logic into a standard XML format in the background, and then hands that data back to the main app for comparison. Projects can be organized into a folder like tree structure inside the app, with search and sorting to make it easy to find a specific project among many. When comparing two versions of a project, the app uses its own comparison logic to highlight meaningful differences in the code while ignoring things like internal editor identifiers and timestamps that change automatically but do not reflect a real logic change. It can also open two blocks side by side in Siemens' own official comparison tool if that tool is installed. Because it depends directly on Siemens TIA Portal, the app only runs on Windows and requires TIA Portal itself to be installed with a specific feature called Openness enabled, along with the user's Windows account being added to a particular permissions group. Setting it up involves cloning the repository, installing its JavaScript dependencies, compiling the small C sharp companion program using the .NET SDK, and then starting the app. The project is released under the MIT license.