As people have realized, getting cavers to understand/use version control systems at all is incredibly difficult.
While a distributed version control would be the best answer -- especially in the field -- they are impossible for normal people to use. It will go wrong immediately, and people will get frustrated, and give up. I have had some success getting some non-techies to use TortoiseSVN (they're all on Windows) and knowledgeforge, under the following project: http://knowledgeforge.net/project/sesame/ The majority of the data can be SVN checked out from: http://knowledgeforge.net/sesame/club/mmmmc/ The files are broken into survex data, scans of survey drawings, and tunnelx (sssssssss!) files. The terms of use of this server is it's public data -- as it should be. Personally, I believe there are very few reasons for cave data not to be public, but you can't convince everyone about what is right. If you look around the data on knowledgeforge, you will find that club/hmg is password protected. This is because it is http://www.hongmeigui.net/ data for Chinese caves, and there was a recent government decree that made it illegal for foreigners to make any maps in China. This is one of the very few legitimate reasons for keeping cave data private. If anyone wants to join knowledgeforge and upload sets of cave data, I can add them to the project. As I said, this particular platform has legs. That is, non-techie cavers are routinely committing files to it. This is the big breakthrough. Julian. On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Bruce <dangle at tomo.co.nz> wrote: > Eighteen months ago there was some discussion about VCS that people were > using with Therion. We have two largish projects and soon to be three people > working on their own copies of the files that every now and again I try to > merge into a coherent dataset. > > > > I suspect itâs well passed the time where we should have been using a VCS, > but you know how it is. Sometimes it seems easier to run along pushing a > bicycle than it is to take the time to choose an appropriate one, and hen > learn to ride it. > > > > A few VCS options were mentioned, including bazaar http://bazaar-vcs.org/en/ >  and subversion http://subversion.tigris.org/ > > > > In an effort to get more local people involved and ease the learning curve > for Therion newcomers Iâm thinking that putting all our data on a web page > and allowing those working on it to have ftp access. Bearing in mind that I > have no experience with any type of automated version control (am > downloading bazaar as I write this) is there any advice out there? > > > > Best VCS application to use? > > Are ease of use for learner computer users, ftp, Therion and VCS mutually > exclusive? My (sheltered) experience with ftp so far is that it is no more > complex than using files on a local disk. Is this a good route or should I > try another path? > > > > Any feedback or advice welcomed. > > Cheers > > Bruce > > > > _______________________________________________ > Therion mailing list > Therion at speleo.sk > http://mailman.speleo.sk/mailman/listinfo/therion > >
