gmane.editors.serna.user

timvn | 3 Dec 09:19

[Serna] File locking/versioning with Serna -- what are others using?

Hi

We have 5-7 editors working collaboratively on XML documents.  
I maintain WebDAV folders from Apache because that was the 
"easiest" way of getting a file lock on our XML documents 
with Serna.  I am having frequent problems with WebDAV file
locking, however, and it has turned into a lot of annoyance
 for the basic protection of a simple file lock.

Beyond a basic file lock, a versioning system could also
 be useful for us. It would be very helpful to know what 
others use either for file locking or versioning in 
similar environments.  To suit us, it should be friendly to
non-technical users.  Our setup is a handful of XP 
machines in a Windows server domain.

I've had Subversion (with TortoiseSVN) recommended to 
me and I'm researching that, though without much past 
experience of versioning systems to compare against.

I'd be grateful to any Serna users who could offer 
advice or comments on file locking / versioning 
systems they've got working well with Serna.  
Even if all you have is a simple file locking mechanism 
that works reliably, I'd be interested to hear what 
it is.

Tim

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p | 3 Dec 13:53

Re: [Serna] File locking/versioning with Serna -- what are others using?

Hi Tim,
Here's a few words from one of our developers that I hope you'll find 
interesting. 

We're storing all our contents for our software projects - including code and 
help source files in a Subversion repository. Subversion is a repository 
system where files aren't locked when users check them out. You use subversion 
by checking out files from a repository, working on them locally - then 
committing your work back to the repository when you're done with your work. 
During your work on the files you checked out you may update and merge in 
changes that have been commited to the files in the repository in the mean 
time.

The subversion repository we're using is hosted on a Windows (2003 server) 
box, and running through Apache as a add-on Module. Running it this way makes 
it integrate with our Active Directory verification system, so that the domain 
username/password is a valid authentication mechanism for the subversion 
repository as well.

Another way to go would be to run the much simpler svnserve on a box.
Never the less, it's (the subversion repository) hostable on any operation 
system (both svnserve and the svn-through-apache).

Here's a guide about howto configure subversion to run through Apache (it's 
amazing that a little googlin' can do) - that's my favorite way to go (FYI):
http://svn.spears.at/

The power of subversion is the ability to run several tracks of development on 
branches and then merge them together when required. I can't say that we have 
tried merging on our dita-based help source yet (at least not when conflicts

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Eliot Kimber | 3 Dec 14:06

Re: [Serna] File locking/versioning with Serna -- what are others using?

p wrote:

vnbook.red-bean.com/
> 
> Then take it from there. I promise you that you won't regret using subversion 
> as a version control system. Again, it's a biased opinion - and other people 
> may argue that CVS would be a better way to go. I've been using subversion on 
> a daily basis for more than 2 years now, and have begun to love the power of 
> it (and accepted it's few quirks).

If the choice is between CVS and Subversion there is no question: use 
Subversion. Subversion does everything CVS does more or less the way CVS 
does it and does other important things as well, such as atomic commits 
of multiple files, versioning of directories, and, most important for 
XML content, handles Unicode data correctly (CVS does not understand 
Unicode and can hose up non-ASCII XML data stored in CVS as ASCII).

 From a UI standpoint, the popular UIs for CVS are also available for 
Subversion (e.g., Tortoise, Eclipse's Team features, etc.).

Also, because Subversion is natively HTTP based, where CVS uses private 
protocols, it's much easier to expose Subversion using normal HTTP and 
Web-based tools rather than having to do special configurations, for 
example, to allow CVS pserver traffic through a firewall.

If you have an existing CVS repository there is a very smooth migration 
path from CVS to Subversion whereby you can take your CVS repository and 
do a one-time import to Subversion with no loss of version history.

Cheers,

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timvn | 3 Dec 15:57

Re: [Serna] File locking/versioning with Serna -- what are others using?

Hi P

Thanks very much for your detailed response on Subversion.  
You're not the first who has been very much in favour of 
this option so that's more encouragement to give it a proper 
test.

Your setup seems similar to ours (Apache from a Windows server) 
which also bodes well.  And the integration with Windows 
authentication would be a bonus.  I'm very keen to be rid 
of file locks if there is a better way.

I have started on the Subversion book and will continue 
to make my way through it.

Two questions which I might not get from there: 
firstly, how often do you run into conflicts (which 
I understand is when two users modify the same 
portion of the file)?  This seems rare, and obviously 
that will depend on how on'es data is structured 
but I'd like to have an idea of others' feelings on this.  

Secondly, can Subversion handle different kinds of 
access to files, say from a web browser with 
filesystem links?  For example, because only staff in 
our corridor can access our web pages, currently 
I serve HTML pages which have links to files in 
WebDAV folders.  There are a few reasons for that, one 
of them searching (one repository is compiled into a 
read-only xml database periodically).  I use a Firefox

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