[WEB4LIB] documenting changes

[Jeff]

On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Donna G Stevenson wrote:

> I may have missed this in the message archive, but does anyone use a good
> method for documenting changes to HTML files?  I don't mean keeping copies
> of old pages for historical value; I would like a way to document small
> changes on a more daily basis.  This problem came up because there is a
> desire at my institution to document each change to the screens for our
> Web OPAC. The problem is how to document the changes without making it
> take so much time to make any change that we stop making changes.  Any
> ideas would be appreciated.

Donna-

The Concurrent Versions System (CVS) is an excellent way to do all of the
above. With a little initial investment in setting it up right the first
time, and a small change in the way you make changes to files, you can
save yourself a lot of headaches down the road. Break something? You can
quickly go back to the unbroken version. Care to make a copy of what the
web site looked like three years ago? Easily done.

CVS is commonly used in software development, to maintain many different
files in many different subdirectories that many different people could be
working on at any one moment in time. This repository of files must be
able to accommodate changes and revision history, with human annotation of
changes, etc. Everything must come together to form a finished product in
the form of a program... [or a website! ;-)]

For an introduction to CVS, see <http://www.cvshome.org/new_users.html>.

There is an excellent book entitled _Open Source Development_ by Karl
Fogel, and the chapters pertaining directly to CVS are available for free
under the terms of the GPL. See <http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/> for the
portions online. 

I would be more than happy to offer what assistance I can to anyone
interested in using CVS. Please note that I will be unable to respond to
e-mail until Tuesday 2000-08-22.

hth,

-jeff

-- 
Jeff Godin
Network Specialist
Traverse Area District Library / Traverse Community Network
jeff at tcnet.org