[Tex/LaTex] How to add version control info (to footers say?)

macrosrevision control

I'd like to keep track of revisions to a document and I use version control software for basically everything (SVN by the way, monotonically increasing revision numbers are their own reward).

I want to add SVN tags like $Id$ for example, SVN will then replace this (if the property is set) with the revision's ID. I'd be nice to show this somehow if only so I can keep track of things more easily. Ideally I'd like to have this info below the title, a list of the files that make up the document (a list of these IDs)

I am using subfiles to allow this to span multiple tex files if that helps.

I am hoping for an easy/canned way of doing this.

I'd like to then compile the document a certain way and have none of this info shown.

I did some searches for LaTeX pre-processor (so I could define a constant if I wanted this info for example) but I'd then have to search for displaying info on the front (which can be done, contents pages prove this) and stitch it all together.

I doubt I am the first to want to do this, so rather than reinvent the wheel, I ask you lot.

Best Answer

Did you try a asking a search engine? One of the first links mentions svn-multi, which can do exactly what you want to achieve.

You can get the info from your repository by adding this to your document.

\svnidlong
{$HeadURL$}
{$LastChangedDate$}
{$LastChangedRevision$}
{$LastChangedBy$}

after setting the svn:keywords to HeadURL LastChangedDate LastChangedRevision LastChangedBy.

With \usepackage{fancyhdr} you can then add the info (Repository URL, last revision and time of last commit) like so

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyfoot{}
\fancyfoot[OR]{\tiny \href{\svnkw{HeadURL}}{Revision \svnkw{LastChangedRevision}} --- last commit on \svnkw{LastChangedDate} --- page \thepage}
\fancyfoot[EL]{\tiny page \thepage\ --- \href{\svnkw{HeadURL}}{Revision \svnkw{LastChangedRevision}} --- last commit on \svnkw{LastChangedDate}}

Take a look at this article by Mark Eli Kalderon in a PracTeX Journal from 2007, which explains everything nicely.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to you use LaTeX to write a document with other people

I am using todonotes with enlarged margins. You just enlarge the size of your document and one margin, but you keep the textwidth the same. You need to use the geometry package for that.

I actually wrote a blogpost about it.

A nice point about todonotes is that they are configurable (you can change the colour & background colour of your notes), that way you can define a \todojim{} command, a \todojeff{} command with different colour sets and you will know without any ambiguity who wrote the note.

Of course this would not be complete without a proper version control system. Pick your favourite!

[Tex/LaTex] texdiff for multi-file documents in subversion

I know coded the following Perl script which calls svn diff in summary mode to get the changed files. It extracts these using svn cat into two different directories and calls latexdiff on each modified file. It modifies the TEXINPUTS variable to load files first from the diff directory instead of the current one. This avoids the copying of all unchanged files. Finally the main file is compile using latexmk.

The usage is perl <scriptfile> <mainfile> <rev a> <rev b>.

It is absolutely not fool-proof so far, but is more general as the shell script linked to in the comments. Please test it and provide some feedback.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @FILES;

my $rpath = '.r';

my ($mainfile,$REVA,$REVB) = @ARGV;
my $dpath = ".diff-${REVA}-${REVB}";

open(my $pipe, '-|', "svn diff --summarize -r${REVA}:${REVB}") or die;
while (<$pipe>) {
    next if not /^M.{7}(.*\.tex)$/;
    push @FILES, $1;
}
close ($pipe);

exit (1) if not @FILES;

mkdir $rpath . $REVA;
mkdir $rpath . $REVB;
mkdir $dpath;

foreach my $file (@FILES) {
    print $file, "\n";
    $file =~ /^(.*)\//;
    my $dir  = $1 || "";
    my $dira = $rpath . $REVA . '/' . $dir;
    my $dirb = $rpath . $REVB . '/' . $dir;
    my $ddir = $dpath         . '/' . $dir;
    mkdir $dira if not -e $dira;
    mkdir $dirb if not -e $dirb;
    mkdir $ddir if not -e $ddir;
    system("svn cat -r${REVA} '$file' > '${rpath}${REVA}/$file'");
    system("svn cat -r${REVB} '$file' > '${rpath}${REVB}/$file'");
    system("latexdiff '${rpath}${REVA}/$file' '${rpath}${REVB}/$file' > '${dpath}/$file'");
}

if (not exists $ENV{"TEXINPUTS"} || $ENV{"TEXINPUTS"} eq '') {
    $ENV{"TEXINPUTS"} = "$dpath:.:";
}
else {
    $ENV{"TEXINPUTS"} = "$dpath:" . $ENV{"TEXINPUTS"};
}

system("latexmk -pdf $mainfile")

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to you use LaTeX to write a document with other people

[Tex/LaTex] texdiff for multi-file documents in subversion

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