1. Source Control What technical communicators need to know

2. About me

3. What I’ll cover NeedConceptsBest practicesSome tools

4. What is source control? A system for managing changes to source code

5. I’ve deleted a file by mistake. Someone has overwritten my changes! Before you can go on holiday, can you leave us all your files? Who changed this file? Why? Who’s got the latest version of this file? Where are the graphics files we used for this topic? I need to find the files we sent to the translators. The developers have pulled this feature. Can we undo the documentation changes?

6. Why don’t we use it? “I’ve made it a policy never to touch source control as I still don’t really understand how it works!”

7. Do you need it? Multiple authors Many small components Multiple concurrent versions Documenting software Unless...

8. Can you manage without it? Sole author Few components Clear process Reliable backups Instead of SC, you could...

9. The basics Common Repository Personal Workspace

10. Adding files Alice Change list Comment

11. Bruno Changing existing files Alice Comment Change list

12. AliceBruno Synchronising changes

13. Best practices Use comments Keep unrelated changes separate Synchronise frequently

14. Deleting files Alice

15. Reverting changes in the repository Alice

16. Concurrent changes and merges

17. Concurrent changes - example Bruno Alice

18. Merge example

19. Merging concurrent changes BrunoAlice 3

20. Merge with caution Not foolproof Some files don’t Different from software But...

21. Best practices - merging Avoid merges for some files! Minimize concurrent changes Merge little and often Consult others if necessary Check the results

22. Baselines

23. Baseline example Alice Beta

24. Branching Permanent Concurrent released versions Temporary New features

25. Branching in action Trunk Feature/Development Branch Release Branch

26. Best practices - branching Propagate from release branches promptly Merge to feature branches regularly

27. What belongs in source control? Sources Not auto- generated outputs

28. Choosing a tool

29. The choices Free or paid forHosted or self-hostedFront endCentralised or DistributedHAT integration

30. Some source control tools Free, CLI + limited GUI Several GUIs, SourceTree is free Git Free, CLI only Several GUIs, TortoiseSVN is free Subversion (SVN) Free for small teams, CLI only Several GUIs, SourceTree, Tortoise Hg are free Mercurial Microsoft Free for small teams, includes GUI Team Foundation Server (TFS) Free for small teams, includes GUI Perforce IBM Enterprise, not free! Rational ClearCase

31. © Marjorie Jones 2015 Artwork © Martin Jones 2015 E: titch990@outlook.com Tw: @titch990 W: https://nfasa.wordpress.com/

32. Resources There is a comprehensive list of current source control tools here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /List_of_revision_control_software To request the handout that accompanies these slides, email titch990@outlook.com