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Re: Managing your notebooks

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg118045] Re: Managing your notebooks
  • From: Brad Rubin <bsrubin at stthomas.edu>
  • Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 17:59:33 -0400 (EDT)

Jason,

I use Wolfram Workbench and the source code management feature that leverages the Subversion tool.  This allows me to commit changes to notebooks while adding a brief comment about that committed version.  I can then reload any previous version, using the brief comment to help me find the version I am looking for.  However, I find that I rarely do go back, so it is more of an insurance policy against making a change and then later regretting it. If you find that you frequently go back to other versions, this might be too cumbersome for you.

-- Brad Rubin

On Apr 9, 2011, at 6:10 AM, Jason Quinn wrote:

> I was curious if anybody would be willing to share there strategy for
> managing their Mathematica notebook versions.
>
> In my experience, Mathematica notebooks are "fragile" because running
> the code is not cleanly separated from using the code. Notebooks
> indicate modification after a cell is run even if no changes to the
> code were made. In practice, after using a notebook for a while, it's
> easy to forget if changes were actually made that you would want to
> keep, so when you are prompted to save a notebook, you are left with a
> dilemma. Staying safe, you save again and again which leads to a
> proliferation of versions.
>
> I am aware you can make cells edit protected but this doesn't solve
> the problem. I also know about the "Notebook history" feature, which
> seems to be of very limited value. I always end up with so many
> "versions" of my notebooks that I forget what the differences between
> them are.
>
> I can't help but feel that I'm missing something. I have no problems
> managing compiled code or interpreted scripts but notebooks are much
> more challenging. Is this something you experience as well. Have you
> too noticed extra difficulty managing your mathematica notebooks?
>
> Comments? Suggestions?
> Jason
>


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