Subversion Merging

[sweeneyskirt]

With so many development teams adopting the Agile process, documenting these features that are being worked on in parallel (often by multiple teams, even though the writer is tasked with incorporating all their work!), I need a way to work on separate branches of docuemntation of the same book (and sometimes the same chapter file in a book) so I can also work in parallel, but incorporate, generate and release changes sequentially.

Am I the only writer with this problem or am I just not using the right search terms?

[FMdancer]

Did you figure a workaround for SVN? My tech writing lead said in her past she was one of multiple teams working simultaneously on FM docs through SVN and they were somehow able to merge the files.

[max_drawdown]

My new manager has asked me to consider SVN with unstructured FM.

I wonder how to manage SVN conflicts with FM's binary (.fm) files?

As a potential source of SVN-indicated change, when I update a .book, does FM update the internal ID number of each marker?

If yes, then presumably every book update would update every file in the book that has a market, including every inset that has a marker, indicating lots of "change" that isn't really change that my authors need to manage.

Thoughts? Suggestions?