Just Enough Subversion For Dungeon World

Posted by Sage LaTorra on Sep 27, 2010 in Media | 0 comments

A couple of weeks ago I made the Dungeon World text available through a Subversion repository. So what’s Subversion?

Subversion is a version control system. There’s two parts to it: a repository that lives on the server and keeps track of every change made to every file, and a client app that allows you to view and edit files. Files are versioned into ‘revision,’ each revision changes one or more files.

Getting the Text

Assuming you want to actually check out the text, the first step is to install Subversion. Go find the install instructions for your OS from the Subversion install page. For Mac users, that may mean having to use one of the various Linux-to-Mac port tools like Fink.

Once you’ve got Subversion installed and made it to some kind of command prompt, it’s time to get the text. The initial act of getting all files in their current state from the repository is called a check out.

Move to whatever directory you’d like to put the Dungeon World text under and enter this command:

svn co http://svn.latorra.org/dungeonworld/

Subversion will spit out a lot of text about the files it’s grabbing. After it’s done, there will be a newly created dungeonworld folder. Inside are the contents of the dungeon world repository. You’re all set!

Staying Up To Date

To get the newest version of Dungeon World at any time, just enter

svn up

while in the dungeonworld directory. Subversion will tell you what new files it’s getting and you’ll end up with the latest text.

Making Changes

At this point, only Adam and I will be making changes to the text directly. That doesn’t mean you can’t contribute. If there’s a change you’d like to see, just start editing the text. When you’re happy with your changes, enter this command from within the dungeonworld directory:

svn diff > <your file name here>

This creates a diff file that describes the differences between your changes and the current version of the files. Just email that diff file to me, and Adam and I will take a look and see about applying it.