Source / Documentation Management
I found a useful bit of information regarding Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) today here, describing what a "Cloaked Project" is - I'm definately going to find this useful for various job related things I do as there are a fair few nodes of the source tree that I seldom need. (such as the source-code for pre-compiled components)
One interesting use for VSS is as a documentation management system, in lieu of a package specifically designed for the task. Whilst it's "better than nothing" it definately has its shortcomings. Over a period of time, many different versions of the same / similar files get created by different people, generally for the same well intentioned reason, but it does tend to result in a tangled folder hierarchy. Sorting out / tidying something like this becomes a bit of a mammoth undertaking, to say the least!!
How about creating a structure, what kind of structure would be best... If you have a product that iterates through versions, with each client generally having every other version of the product, what's the best structure to store documentation? (For example, Clients A & B tend to have the even-numbered releases and clients B & C tend to have the odd-numbered releases) Do you have a ROOT > VERSION > CLIENT structure, or a ROOT > CLIENT > VERSION structure, or something more complex?
A potential structure is ROOT > VERSION > CLIENT, accompanied by ROOT > CLIENTS > CLIENT for non-version specific documentation, such as Contracts and the like, and in the ROOT > VERSION > CLIENT structure, you either store the "generic" documentation for that version in the VERSION folder, or a "GENERIC" sub-folder thereof. What about non-client, non-version specific documentation? Is there even such a thing? Surely any piece of documentation should be created for a specific version and then copied to the later version and updated if required,... but then should the same apply to generic documentation.
Let's say that the product is a Cake. The base recipe might undergo changes between versions, with bespoke "patches" applied for some clients. For example, clients A & B might have the cake plain, client C might have it with an "icing-on-the-top" patch, and client D might have it with a "chocolate-flavour" patch,... Should the generic recipe be kept in a GENERIC folder, or copied four times, once into each of the clients folders?
Documentation management gives me a headache.
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