odfsvn 1.0a1

Introduction

ODFSVN is a set of tools that allow you to manage ODF documents in a subversion repository. There are several reasons that make this a very useful thing to do:

• it allows you to use all features of a version control system: all changes are archived along with change notes, making it possible to roll back to previous versions, see who made what changes and why, etc.

• it makes it possible to have multiple people sharing their changes to a document through a shared repository. That means that you can always see all changes from all editors, update your version to the latest revision and submit your changes. No matter where you are, with or without access to your email, you will always be able to share your work.

For now this can be done through the odfsvn command line tool. In the (near) future this will also be possible through a plugin for OpenOffice.org.

Quick example

Suppose you are working on a proposal with a group of people. The proposal is stored in a file called proposal.odt which you have just created. The first thing that you need to do is import this file into an existing repository:

$ odfsvn import -m "Simplon proposal for odf RFP" proposal.odt \
  http://code.simplon.biz/proposals/odf.odt
Commited revision 22

This will have added your file to the repository. The -m parameter was used to set the commit message for this change.

You can now use the info command to check the repository information inside your file:

$ odfsvn info proposal.odt
Path: proposal.odt
Type: svn
URL: http://code.simplon.biz/proposals/odf.odt
Repository UUID: 1a87ecf8-a9bc-47a4-9dc9-5f45153203cc
Revision: 22

If one of your co-editors wants to work on this proposal he must first retrieve the document using the checkout command:

$ odfsvn checkout http://code.simplon.biz/proposals/odf.odt
Checked out revision 22

He can now edit the odf.odt file using his normal editors. After making any changes he can commit them using the commit command:

$ odfsvn commit -m "Added estimates and initial planning" odf.odt
Changes committed.

You can now update your local copy using the update command:

$ odfsvn update proposal.dt
Updated to revision 23

Installation

odfsvn requires the subversion command line tool svn, python and setuptools to be installed.

After installing those requirements you can install odfsvn using the easy_install command:

easy_install odfsvn

This will install the odfsvn command and the associated python package. If you are using a UNIX shell you may need to refresh the command cache from your shell after doing this (hash -r or rehash generally).