We have set up a data repository on SourceForge to house the growing number of data files that are worked on daily by new curators and students. The repository uses Subversion (SVN) software to maintain current and all previous versions of each Phenex data file. Curators “update” the local copies of data files on their computers with the current versions from the repository, add their modifications, and “commit” their modified local copy to the repository at the end of their work session. We have been using ZigVersion as a friendly graphical client interface to SVN.
This is a great improvement to our system of file management. We previously used a server for file sharing, which limited us to saving only the current version of each file. Aside from version control, SVN has other nice features such as automatic file merging if a curator checks in a different version of a file (which might happen if the file on the repository has been updated by another user since the curator first updated their local copy). Curators also utilize commit comments to document the edits made on a data file.
Phenoscape 