GitCCMS Workflow for Updating Content Specs

In Pressgang, a content spec is an outline (like a table of contents) that assembles topics into a complete document. You can think of it as being analogous to a DITA map. As mentioned in a previous post, the GitCCMS utility can generate the content spec for you, if you enter the following command:

$ gitccms cs

Putting the generated content spec file into the location, cspec/<BookName>/contentspec.spec. You can then upload the new content spec using the standard Pressgang utility, csprocessor, as follows:

$ cd cspec/<BookNaem>
$ csprocessor create contentspec.cspec
...
Content Specification ID: 22781
Revision: 664539
...

If the content specification is successfully created, the new content spec ID is logged to the console (in this case, 22781).

But what if you make some changes to the structure of the book in your git repository and you need to update the content spec? How do you go about that using GitCCMS? First of all, you need to store the new content spec ID in your .git-ccms configuration file. Using your favourite text editor, open the .git-ccms file and add a cspec attribute to the relevant book element. For example, if you had just created the content spec for the book, esb_migration.xml, edit the configuration file as follows:

<context>
    <books>
        ...
        <book file="esb_migration/esb_migration.xml" cspec="22781"/>
        ...

And don't forget to commit that change:

git add .git-ccms
git commit -m "Added cspec ID for esb_migration book"

Now you are ready to regenerate the content spec using GitCCMS, as follows:

$ gitccms cs

If you take a peek at the regenerated content spec file, cspec/<BookName>/contentspec.spec., you can see that the ID is now included:

ID = 22781
# Book_Info.xml content
Title = Migration Guide
Subtitle = Migrating to Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6.1
...

You can now upload this revised content spec to Pressgang using the csprocessor push command, as follows:

$ cd cspec/<BookNaem>
$ csprocessor push contentspec.cspec
...
Content Specification ID: 22781
Revision: 664546
...