Collaboration with Subversion

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honyk

Post #24063 Posted 5/13/2009 3:01:48 PM

Junior Member

Group: Customers
Last Login: 2/25/2010 4:29:45 PM
Posts: 23, Visits: 160

Hello Everyone,

I am considering to establish any feasible toolchain for sharing/exchange/collaboration of genealogy content with other relatives. At the beginning I only plan to edit content by myself (to keep consistency and current style) from snippets sent me by the others. In my work I've met Subversion system and now I am considering using it also for this. XML format which can be exported from GenoPro seems to be ideal for storing in SVN as it is text file only. Unfortunately there are exported also coordinates of each individual object so diff tool will show to anybody many not real-content-relative changes. But I think that in common use only log messages for each commit will be interesting for the others. SVN repository will be available on any public server and only those with credentials will have access to check xml file out.
SVN has advantage in distribution of changed document. Once files are checked out on local disk, they can be easily updated on single click (if there is Internet connection available). This file can be directly opened via GenoPro. Author of snippet can easily check if the result corresponds with his original data and that's it.
From time to time editor (me) should export gno data into XML and commit them into SVN repository + describe changes made.

User view
Pros: easy update
Cons: install, set up and use uncommon tools (SVN Tortoise)

Editor view
Pros: easy distribution
Cons: find appropriate server hosting, establish SVN repository, administration of user acounts, set up post-commit hooks (infomails) etc.

At present this system cannot be used in multiedit mode. As written above, storing position of objects in XML file would cause many conflicts, which would be very hard to resolve.
I think for future it would be nice to split xml into two parts - data and its visual presentation. Only data would be commited via collaborative partners, visual appearance would be commited only by the main editor. If somebody would infringe this rule, his commit could be easily reverted in SVN. But this is far future.

I am writing this here to discuss the whole idea, if this is the way or there are any evidend weaknesses and faults in this concept or there are better way how to achieve this.

BTW, it would be nice if SVN repository could be hosted on GenoPro server. I think this solution could be interesting also for others. Additionaly, there could be web interface into this repository so logged users could browse files, which could be optionally dynamically converted into HTML reports, displayed as SVG graphics and why not also directly edited using any RIA application... Stop dreaming!

Jan