Eric S Fraga <e.fr...@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
> On Tuesday, 8 Jun 2021 at 20:15, Greg Minshall wrote: >> Eric, when you use something RCS-like as your version control system, i >> assume that makes grepping to find some old note easy enough. but, >> these days i tend to use git. when (assuming) you use git, do you have >> some easy way to say "well, i had this code that looked sort of like >> this... where was it?"? (sorry, that's really a git question, but ...) > > Yes, for SRC (RCS-like), it's straightforward to go into the ,v file and > search. For git, I try to make sure the commit message is as > informative as necessary and then search on the log. The alternative is > git-timemachine which allows me to go back and forward in time looking > at the buffer. > > Having said this, I don't often find myself looking for anything in the > history. For major alternatives that might come up during the project, > I use branches. But only with git as I have never figured out how to > get a branch set up in src. Similar here as well. There are some good git tools, like timemachine and git blame and having good commit messages is crucial. However, it really depends on what your use case is. Other suggestions, like maintaining a 'date tree' with sections under that can be really useful for some scenarios. Marking some sections as archived can also be useful. A lot depends on whether what you want is an org file which documents the current state of play or one which is more similar to a lab book which contains a more chronological type evolution of ideas and experiments. I often setup completely separate org 'projects' which will consist of multiple org files and will move things between different files as the project evolves. In some extreme cases, I may even have multiple git branches and will often use git tags to mark specific 'milestones'. How I decide whether to use a date tree with notes, branches, tags, archive sections/files, separate org files etc is typically determined by how likely I might be to want to review or go back through previous work/experiments/decisions. Working this out can take a bit of time and experimentation, but in general, I rarely need to checkout old versions or even open archive trees/files. I do have a journal file for each major project which has lots of ideas, random thoughts and even small experiments (with source blokcs) and I tend ot have a large 'reference' file which contains notes and links to external references and then a 'main' org file, which reflects the current state. -- Tim Cross
