Subject: [Techspec] request for version control throughout document lifetimes

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:56:46 +0100

This is an extract from a discussion on the ietf mailing list. I
stronly propose to implement the following to support document
authors/editors:

a) There should be an IETF controlled version control system which can
   be used by WGs to maintain the documents they are working on. 

   The currently favored systems is "subversion". It supports WebDAV
   (an IETF standards-track technology :) and is generally seen as the
   CVS replacement in the open source community. The WebDAV
   implementation allows to specify detailed access control rules.

b) Since document life does not end when a document is shipped to the
   RFC editor, I would request that the RFC editor accesses the same
   repository to make any editorial changes to the document during the
   publication process. The idea here is that all editorial changes
   are kept in a single version controlled repository so that later
   revisions and updates to a document (when the document is opened up
   again after a few years) do not require to manually apply editorial
   changes made during the RFC publication back to the versions
   maintained by authors (as it is often the case these days).

c) Working with a version controlled repository makes it easier to
   communicate changes. Rather than sending (sometimes lengthy)

   OLD

   NEW

   instructions, it is possible to simply checkout a document
   revision, edit it and post the machine generated diff. Adopting a
   diff/patch style is likely to streamline the communication during
   the RFC editing and AUTH48 periods.

/js

P.S. It seems that the open source community much better understands
     what it means to edit documents and how important it is to agree
     on formats and style guidelines in order to be efficient. I hope
     the IETF can catch up to their standards of productivity. So I
     welcome this effort (and of course the great work the tools group
     is doing).

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International University Bremen
<http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany

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