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Binary documentation in SVN?

From: Keith Wellman <keith_at_Bladelogic.com>
Date: 2005-01-28 17:12:31 CET

Hi.
 
I'm looking for information about using svn for documentation
versioning. I'm wondering if there is a recommended way of using svn to
handle this sort of situation (outlined below)?
 
Scenario:
 
We have a tech writing staff that works mostly in framemaker, which uses
binary files for storing their various booksets and are used to generate
pdf's and other rich (and binary) document formats.
 
Their classic mode of operation in other source control systems is to
make use of the exclusive locking mechanisms to prevent concurrent work
on the same files. My understanding is that svn is not looking to
support any locking mechanism until the 1.2.0 timeframe (or later).
 
I'm not aware of any good tools that would handle merging of these sorts
of files, and I've met strong resistance from the writing staff about
how well merging could be done even if the right tools could be found.
 
so:
 
* is there a svn "best-practice" for this sort of work? I suppose "no"
is a perfectly reasonable answer.. :D
 
* if there is one... what is it?
 
We certainly have the option of keeping documentation in a separate
versioning tool, but I'd like to avoid that if it isn't too much of a
burden on out tech writers to use subversion. But they do seem to have
valid concerns about concurrent changes to framemaker files being
difficult or impossible to deal with.
 
Thanks for any help this list can provide.
 
-- Keith Wellman
BladeLogic, Inc.
keith@bladelogic.com
Received on Fri Jan 28 17:17:19 2005

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