Zim - a desktop wiki

Version Control

Zim's default installation ships with a Version Control Plugin. To enable it, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins and check the box next to Version Control.

Dependencies: This plugin requires one of the supported version control systems to be installed. Currently only Bazaar is supported, so this application is required. In specific the "bzr" command should be available in the system path.

Introduction

If you want to keep track of your changes or if you want to collaborate on a Zim Wiki as a team, Version Control is the best way to go. Zim integrates very well with existing Version Control Software because all relevant data is stored in plain text files.

Usage

To save the current state of the Notebook, choose File -> Save Version... from the Main Menu and confirm that you want to enable Version Control. In the next window add a comment describing the changes (probably something like "yeah, first version" at this point) and confirm by clicking Save.
You can browse the complete history of saved versions by selecting File -> Versions... from the Main Menu. You can view and restore previous versions of your Notebook and view all your changes between two versions in the window that open.

Sharing

TODO here should be documented how to share the newly created repository with your collaborators...

Details

Technically speaking a local repository is created when enabling Version Control -- a Bazaar repository to be precise. Every time you save a version, another revision is checked in. Zim just uses the Bazaar application, so you can always view and export your history using standard Bazaar tools.

Manual Version Control

This is for advanced users that have to use another Version Control System or have other reasons not to use the included plugin.

To manually manage revisions of your Notebook, the following files should be added to your repository:

the *.zim file in the root folder
all your pages (*.txt files in the root folder and subfolders, but there should be no other files in these folders anyway)
all files linked/embedded from/into your pages -- but you probably guessed this

All files created by Zim are in plain text format and only change when you explicitly change them so you should get readable, reasonable diffs and merges in case of conflicts.

You can and should ignore the following items however:

the complete .zim hidden folder
anything you manually put into or below the root folder you do not want to be in your repository

The files in the .zim folder are caches of the index and some client configuration (window sizes, scroll position etc.) and some of it is in binary format, so you do not need or want it in your repository.

If you want for some reason stop using version control and throw away all history, you can do the following:

disable the version control plugin
quit zim
remove the .bzr folder and .bzrignore file from your notebook