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I have to work on some docs, I need a software that can trace all the modifications that I will make to a specific file or project (group of files): is there something like that?

The important thing is that I have to do that with a single machine so I do not need a distributed solution, I only have to work with txt files with UTF-8 charset and pdf files.

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What are the important qualities of a versioning system "especially designed for documents" that wouldn't exist in a versioning system designed for source code? – OrbWeaver Nov 24 '11 at 21:19
If it's just text and PDF files, why specify "especially designed for documents"? IBM FileNet is good for other kinds of documents, but I would imagine that text can just be done with a version control system for code. Why not? – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Nov 24 '11 at 21:22
@OrbWeaver it can be much more simple and easy to use. – Micro Nov 24 '11 at 22:26
@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner does not seems to be what i am actually looking for, thanks anyway. – Micro Nov 24 '11 at 22:28
@OrbWeaver: Consider, for a moment, trying to keep Excel spreadsheets or MS-Word documents in Subversion. "svn diff" pretty much does nothing useful. – Ross Patterson Nov 25 '11 at 19:12

2 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

I use git to track my local files.

git init .
git add myfile1.txt myfile2.txt
git commit -m "Added first two files"
...

You can track everything on your local repo without needing an external one.

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thanks, i will give it a try. – Micro Nov 24 '11 at 22:33
up vote 4 down vote

You can use a DVCS anyway.
DVCS works great with a local repository that stays only on your local machine.
You don't have to distribute, i.e. push or pull to or from other machines.

EDIT:
The most known and used DVCS are Git (as already suggested in the accepted answer) and Mercurial.

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i was looking for some names ... – Micro Nov 24 '11 at 22:29
@Micro: I added one more name! – Christian Specht Nov 24 '11 at 22:46
+1 for mentioning Mercurial. It doesn't get as much attention as Git, but it's better thought out and less "hacky". – Ross Patterson Nov 25 '11 at 19:13
Yes, that's why I mentioned it. I'm using it as well, and I'm still having my little problems with Git :-) – Christian Specht Nov 26 '11 at 14:40

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