Git for an Archived Data (GFAD)

A lot of enterprise apps uses archived file as a project. Those archives may contain raw data in different text formats. Therefore, an archive content can be tracked using a VCS (Version Control System).

For example, pptx file, which is being used to store MS Office PowerPoint document, is a zip archive with changed extension.

The archive contains:

.
│   [Content_Types].xml
│
├───docProps
│       app.xml
│       core.xml
│       thumbnail.jpeg
│
├───ppt
│   │   presentation.xml
│   │   presProps.xml
│   │   tableStyles.xml
│   │   viewProps.xml
│   │
│   ├───slideLayouts
│   │   │   slideLayout1.xml
│   │   │   slideLayout10.xml
│   │   │   slideLayout11.xml
│   ├───slides
│   │   │   slide1.xml
│   │   │
│   │   └───_rels
│   │           slide1.xml.rels
│   │
│   ├───theme
│   │       theme1.xml
│   │
│   └───_rels
│           presentation.xml.rels
│
└───_rels
        .rels

As you can see, there is a lot of text files that can be controlled via git.

The project Git for an Archived Data provides utility that automates archive packing and unpacking for tracking the content of the archive.

How to use

1. Run npx git-for-archived-data -a init to initialize the project.

This step creates two files:

• git-for-archived-data.json - the project configuration file;
• .prettierrc - the configuration file for the code formatter.

Be careful with xml* flags in the .prettierrc. It can break the MS Office file if set up wrongly. xmlWhitespaceSensitivity must be strict.

2. Edit git-for-archived-data.json and configure archive files

3. Run npx git-for-archived-data -a unpack to unpack the configured archives

4. Run npx git-for-archived-data -a pack to pack the archives back

Also, watch mode npx git-for-archived-data -a watch can be used to automatically unpack and pack the archives.

Use-Cases

• Git for Proteus
• Git for MS Office:
  • Git for MS Word
  • Git for MS Excel
  • Git for MS PowerPoint