If you are a user of Subversion, the package svn may be for you. It has explicit cleverness about dealing with dates:\def\RCS$#1: #2 ${\expandafter\def\csname RCS#1\endcsname{#2}} \RCS$Revision: 1.37 $ % or any RCS keyword \RCS$Date: 2012/02/07 21:46:08 $ ... \date{Revision \RCSRevision, \RCSDate}
will (once subversion has committed a copy of the document) cause\
documentclass
{<foo>}
...
\
usepackage{svn}
\
SVNdate
$Date$
\
author{...}
\
title{...}
...
\
begin{document}
\
maketitle
...
\
end{document}
\
maketitle
use the date that has been written into the
$Date$
keyword.
Another alternative for Subversion users is the
svninfo package, which has much the same mechanisms as does
svn but with a rather different focus. Svninfo
does the date trick that svn performs (controlled by a
package option), and can set up page foot-lines using
package fancyhdr. There isn’t much to
choose between the two packages: you should read the packages’
documentation to see which suits you best.
An alternative script-based approach to version control has been taken
by the vc bundle, that in certain situations might work more
reliably than any of the packages mentioned above. The vc
bundle supports Bazaar, Git and
Subversion usage and works with both LaTeX and
Plain TeX. Note that vc is the only option that
currently claims to support Bazaar-controlled repositories.
Finally, for now, the gitinfo package supports
Git-controlled documents.
This answer last edited: 2011-08-31
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