Document Management with Subversion

Version control systems like CVS, Subversion or MS Visual Source Safe are essential tools for managing source code.  However, they can also be used to manage standard company documents, like financial spreadsheets, marketing literature, logos, etc.. I've found this a successful approach for managing shared documents and non-technical staff are soon happy using the system.

The general concept is to have a central document repository. The users work on their own local copies of the repository. You have to explicitly fetch updated documents, and explicitly check-in your changes.  This may seem like effort - but retaining explicit control over these basic actions is what makes the system work.

I recommend using Subversion (SVN) which allows version of directories and renaming of files.  Together with Tortoise SVN client, which integrates into Windows Explorer.  There are several options for the SVN networking, we use the svnserve approach.  (If you are installing SVN on a remote unix server you can tunnel your connections over ssh to get a secure connection.)

One thing to take care over is delete operations.  Once you've marked a file for deletion, undoing this operation is difficult because the file has been removed. It would be better if tortoiseSVN kept the local file with a mark against it - so it could be used as a target to undo the delete.

Comments

[Stefan]

Undoing a deletion is easy, no need to keep the deleted file:

right-click on the parent folder, choose "Revert" - the deleted file will show up in the revert dialog for you to select.

[Edward Ross]

Many thanks for the tip Stefan!