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I'm looking for a nice versioning system for LaTeX. At home I use SVN and it's great, but some of my fellow students have a hard time just coping with LaTeX.

Is there a version management package or other easy solution that doesn't involve a server or strage programs to do the job?

It would be great if some variable was increased every time the document was compiled or something like that.

Cheers

Hugo
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    version control can be managed by many distributed systems (git, mercurial (hg), bazaar (bzr)), etc. nothing is targeted LaTeX, but more of general use. However, many have a learning curve. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revision_control_software – nickpapior Feb 18 '13 at 15:12
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    You would be better of asking this at a sister site of TeX stackexchange. Stackoverflow might be a good reference here. – nickpapior Feb 18 '13 at 15:15
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    Increasing a variable every compilation seems not very useful: as you need at least 2 compilations to produce a table of content and to stabilize reference, your first document will go from v1 to v3 directly... Is TortoiseSVN not enough "easy" (just point&clic) – Lionel MANSUY Feb 18 '13 at 15:39
  • zeroth: Yes, I'll ask there instead. Thank you Lionell: Sure I see you point. But that could be solved by using a decimal number and a floor function, it's primitive though. I wish they would just learn to use SVN, but I've tried and failed in teaching them. – Hugo Feb 18 '13 at 15:49
  • I think no need to back up every compile. Just encouraging (requiring?) them to compile often and save stable versions locally every once in a while - mypaper01.tex, mypaper02.tex, ... will develop good habits. Then graduating to svn might be easier for them. – Ethan Bolker Feb 18 '13 at 16:03
  • Would an online system work? If so, there are various solutions that (claim to) integrate version control 'naturally'. – Joseph Wright Feb 18 '13 at 16:15
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    If you commit yourself to using something that's not a good, well-designed VCS, then you're probably going to be stuck forever with that poorly designed solution. Why not just use something well designed such as git, and teach your co-workers to use it through a gui? Try googling git gui. –  Feb 18 '13 at 16:18
  • I'll dig into this. An online system would be great, but I'm not sure if they can be trusted with my data. Git could be an alternative. Many thanks – Hugo Feb 18 '13 at 16:25
  • Have a look at fossil http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki – yannisl Feb 18 '13 at 16:43
  • @EthanBolker, with a distributed VCS (like git, hg, bzr) to commit is a very lightweight operattion. I use git, and my commits often change a single line. Each one a logical (even if minimal) change. – vonbrand Feb 18 '13 at 17:15
  • @BenCrowell, a VCS is a tool that has many uses. Select one, and stick with that for everything (LaTeX, code, text worklogs, ...). Yes, it takes some work to get used to it, but the payoff is manifold. – vonbrand Feb 18 '13 at 17:17
  • As @You suggested here, you could use bitbucket. I just mention it, because it's not the wikipedia list mentioned by zeroth. – Count Zero Feb 18 '13 at 17:30
  • I would stick to SVN, for beginners the most simple thing in my opinion. – Uwe Ziegenhagen Feb 18 '13 at 17:41
  • A lot of alternatives. I'm open to learn new systems, but I'm only familiar with Git and SVN. Are there any especially well fitted for LaTeX? – Hugo Feb 18 '13 at 17:47
  • Just my two cents: I am happy with bitbucket and mercurial (hg). I find hg commands easier to learn and keep in my head than git (which would technically work as well though). When collaborating with people who don't "get" hg, I put a repository in a Dropbox folder for them to use and commit their changes for them. Despite not being specific for LaTeX, hg is pretty simple: hg init, hg add, hg commit are all you need to get started, then hg push and hg pull to save online. – mforbes Feb 18 '13 at 19:46
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about version control in general, not TeX. – Joseph Wright Aug 08 '13 at 07:36
  • I've closed here as this question really isn't TeX-specific, and it's also quite opinion-based (which system is accessible to others depends on them as much as the system). – Joseph Wright Aug 08 '13 at 07:36

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