June 02, 2004

Version Control and the Single Dissertation

As my dissertation moves along1, I'm finding that I need to track versions like never before. Here's the constraints (and I suspect they are not uncommon):

  1. I use binary files. In particular, I use Microsoft Word. Which means that things like CVS won't really give me a good "compare" for merges.
  2. I work on a variety of machines, including a desktop at home, a desktop in the office, and a laptop.
  3. I use network storage (always available from the office, usually from home, sometimes from the laptop)
  4. I use a pen drive (annoying to put in anything except the laptop2)
  5. I edit on vast quantities of printouts.

This leaves a nasty synchronization problem or two. Some are just the fault of the existence of paper (if I leave behind a draft, I really don't have it.) But some are just the fact that HotSync-for-desktops really isn't there. Below the fold is a (painstaking!) discussion of how I solve it. How do you?

1 Chapter 3 nearly done; Chapter 4 over halfway there; now working on 5; 1-2, 6 still in need of work; still working on the source document that will become 7...

2 Dude, I've got a Dell. And the front-side USB slots all point downward, under a weird plastic flap.

When I collaborate on papers with my advisor, we incrementally number. I send him draft 1, he sends me back draft 2. I respond with 3, and possibly 3a if I have more edits before I hear back from him. And so on.

This numbering goes in the filename. CHI-PAPER-1.DOC. And so on.

I've adapted that for this problem. Chapter-#-version.doc is the way an entire directory of my disk looks right now. When I copy to another medium, I increment. When I mail a copy to someone else, I increment. Paper printouts use Microsoft Word's rather nice auto-time-and-date feature, as well as the filename feature. Which means I have piles of paper around labelled "Chapter 3-5.doc 16 11:41 AM " on each page.

Now the numbers go up annoyingly fast, and there's no real way to synchronize myself between chapters temporally. But at least I can track versions, a little, and know something about which are obsolete. (It's harder to know which is the newest. Occasioanlly, I'll hit version K on one machine, and irritably remember that I've already created K on another.)

I don't have a canonical place to store versions. That's because I've been travelling to various places, and when I travel, I want the canonical version on my laptop; when I'm home, I want it on my network drive.

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Ick.

Looking back on this, it looks even worse. How do you do it?

Update: Red Ted has even longer names than I do. Of course, my dissertation is a smaller entity than his--they mean different things in the social sciences.

June 2, 2004 12:57 AM | TrackBack | in Data and Documents