In the professional electronics industry:
A bodge is an inelegant but workable “
fix” applied to extend functionality or correct a problem. Reliability can be reduced due to the mechanical construction, but this is not an essential requirement for the
fix to be considered as a bodge.
It is quite possible to create a new interface printed circuit board (
PCB) without any reliability
issues, but this board can be referred to as a “bodge board” simply because it is an inelegant after-thought.
Things which start off life as bodges can later be properly incorporated into the design and then get magically transformed into standard practice.
Software (especially embedded software) and firmware can also be bodged. This might be used when pushed to
ship workable code, where some error condition causes a software
crash. You don’t understand where the error is coming from but you trap the error and
ship the system anyway. (Hoping to
fix the error properly later.)
>The only thing I can do in the
time available is to bodge the software by ignoring any data lines which have zero length.
>So, you want to fit the larger transformer into the case by putting a “power bulge” on the back panel. What a bodge!
>We need to
ship this unit a soon as possible. How long will it take to get the bodge-board designed and tested?
>I know it is a bit of a bodge, but if you inter-link the power rails with a diode between the output terminal blocks, the system
will start up reliably every
time.
