[Techtalk] Version Control for Docs?

[Cynthia Kiser]

Quoting nicole <colby at wsu.edu>:
> The only problem with documentation is that you don't *need* to
> check out the whole tree for docs, you may just need a single
> file. This is the one good thing about VSS.

You don't have to check out the entire tree to work with a single
document - though I do think it is easier to do so. I always have a
"working copy" of everything I am doing. Since CVS doesn't lock on
checkout like I believe VSS does, there isn't any penalty to having a
full checkout - other than (cheap) disk space. But if you want to
check out just one file, you can do: 

cvs checkout -r HEAD /repository/path/to/documentation/files/filename.doc

> Something that does diffs of word documents and such would be nice, but I
> really won't hold my breath (maybe SharePoint can do this). 

Word has its own version tracking stuff if you want to turn it on. But
from CVS's point of view, it is all going to be icky binary,
non-diff-able stuff. 

I started doing my docs in DocBook and love it. 95% of what I needed
to know was in /www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-docbk.html if
you are interested in converting.

-- 
Cynthia N. Kiser
cnk at ugcs.caltech.edu