I'm new to Flare and am checking it out with a view to migration in the next few months.
My question is this: can I put in place a sensible strategy for maintaining multiple versions of a single product's documentation at once using Flare?
Here are my requirements and assumptions:
- Each version represents a different release of the software product, e.g. 1.0, 1.2, 2.0 or 5.0R3.
I must maintain multiple versions of a single set of topics, one per product release. The number of product releases may be upwards of 5, and this number will grow.
I will be publishing to flat HTML files, web help and PDFs, all of which must be available - profiled for the distinct product releases.
I want to maintain true single-sourcing, and I don't want to create parallel topics for each product release (unless it's the only way)
At any time, I want to be able to build the docs set for any given product release.
The extent of variation between product releases may be as simple as nouns changing, right up to large sections being added to topics. ToCs may change between product releases.
I can't see any recommendations in the MadCap manuals, and I wonder what people are doing in this area.
It's also worth saying that if at all possible, I would rather avoid using SCM tags to mark product releases. If I did this, I wouldn't be able to go back and update tagged versions later.
All ideas and experiences appreciated
Thanks,
Graeme