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My team is using ARENA software. ARENA is a drag-and-drop 'programming language' where that is meant to characterize flow of units. One of the example models is characterizing airport security lines and flow.

Anyway, mostly all the logic is done via dragging some object from the palette, then adding some properties to it via a dialog box. Here is a screenshot http://tisconsulting.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/RockwellArenaScreenshot.jpg

ARENA saves its model in one large .doe file. I opened it up with notepad++ and it looks similar to a markup but with a lot of gibberish added.

My boss wants us to use Git for version control. But from what I understand its support for non-text files in minimal. Thanks for reading this far. I'm wondering if Git will work well for this kind of file. In my case "is it different" is not really helpful.

sameagol
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    If there's a prettyprinter for the format and the engine isn't actively trying to hide what it's doing by refusing to admit the notion of whitespace, you can certainly use Git. How convenient it will be depends on whether the engine can read the prettyprinted text directly, whether it reassigns arbitrary ids willy-nilly, and similar considerations. For instance, it's not so very hard to use Git productively on zipped-xml formats like ODF, you just have to be willing to get in and mix it up with the innards of the format, and be a little lucky on how arbitrary the tools' behavior is.. – jthill Feb 22 '19 at 00:03
  • But [Is Arena supported on a Mac? Arena is a Windows-based application. We support the following operating systems: Microsoft® Windows® 8, Windows® 8.1, Windows® 7, Microsoft Windows Vista (SP2 or later), Microsoft Windows® XP Pro or Home (32-bit SP3, 64-bit SP2), Microsoft Windows® Server 2008 ](https://www.arenasimulation.com/frequently-asked-questions) and the rest of what's on that page leaves me pretty darn dubious of your odds. – jthill Feb 22 '19 at 00:07
  • Thanks for your prettyprint suggestion and words of caution. I'll check into that functionality. – sameagol Feb 22 '19 at 02:21
  • ARENA is based on [SIMAN modelling language](https://i.imgur.com/GyOYQVX.png). Could you please check if there is an option to export or import pure SIMAN model and experiment code from an ARENA model? – Dima Chubarov Feb 23 '19 at 02:43
  • jthill and DmitriChubarov, There is an option to read/write SIMAN code in Run -> SIMAN -> view/write. However, I wasn't able to use this code file to create or modify an existing project. When I tried, ARENA overwrote the file I was trying to use as source. Moreover, the SIMAN code is stored in a single file, even for complicated projects. So if I magically created import functionality, the utility of git would still be minimal - limited to recording changes to one file. – sameagol Feb 28 '19 at 01:55

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