RE: [chairs] Recommendations for Version Control System!

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Interesting about XML suitability for version-control.  I guess we could
even get version-control labeling inside of <!-- --> comment items
(interesting to see if the list server avoids derailing on the angle
brackets in this sentence).

For ODF and also OOXML, we have the odd fact that the documents are packaged
in custom Zip files.

There is an XML-only form that is a defined ODF document-instance format
that is usable when there is no collateral content that must be packaged
with it.  This might be useful for some of our feature-confirmation work on
the OIC TC.  However, my experience is that packaging up feature
confirmation material as well as incident information typically requires
multiple items (including a manifest and metadata) and submission and
archiving via Zip is still likely.  (A CMS and even a simple web site might
do the job here.)

It will be interesting to see what shows up when we have more experience.
I'm sure it will be discussed further.

 - Dennis

PS: I am practicing ways to not use "test suite" and "test cases" and
"conformance tests" when, as in the case of the OIC TC, materials are not
being collected/developed by the TC for any kind of product or conformance
assessment nor for any certification purpose.  (Roughly speaking, that kind
of evaluative use appears to be out of scope for us, although our materials
might be adapted to such use outside of the realm of OASIS and the TC.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Parducci [mailto:bill@parducci.net] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/chairs/200810/msg00016.html
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 11:18
To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org
Cc: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org; 'Norman Walsh'; 'Duane Nickull'
Subject: Re: [chairs] Recommendations for Version Control System!

On Oct 30, 2008, at 11:06 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/chairs/200810/msg00015.html

>
> I am not so sure that a source-code versioning system is all that
> well-suited for standards development work, and even building  
> repositories
> of sample documents related to conformance work.  If there is software
> involved, that's a different matter.

Agree re: binary doc formats like .doc but it is quite well suited for  
text based documents like XML which is why we have been clamoring for  
it to host XACML conformance tests. This of course assumes that  
conformance information be submitted on a per files basis (vs. a  
compressed archive binary ;)

Definitely agree on the need for issue tracking and I believe Oasis is  
working on a solution for that now...

b