Is There A VCS-Like System on Libreoffice Documents

I am currently writing my graduation thesis on Libreoffice. I was wondering about if there is a version control system on Libreoffice Writer documents as online platform or offline feature where I can:

• track changelog of document
• have a chance to get back to a former commit
• maybe have branches to write chapters in different ones

At first, I thought that saving as XML might be a good idea, then I wondered if I would have feature losses when I reopen the documents (since it will contain images).

The Way of Saving As Directory

I also know I can open odt files with an archive manager. However, I could not find a feature or solution to save document into a folder as is rather than odt format. I also thought, maybe I could drag-drop archive contents to a git initialized folder and commit. However, if I finish my work, should I compress them as tar.gz or tar.bz and change extension to odt? I could not be sure.

Why I Do Not Use LaTeX

I do not want to use LaTeX since the LaTeX itself and library needs a quite large disk space and my document will contain lots of images. I am actually writing my thesis on generative grammar and LaTeX has an extension to draw syntax trees, but the development of that extension is (i) either stopped or too slow and (ii) it looks quite ugly and (iii) maybe I cannot apply Minimalist Program of Chomsky in that extension.

Why I Do Not Prefer Google Drive Document

Google Drive is a good idea, but it might have some limitations. And I really hesitate using an office-related software in a web platform.

So, I wondered if there was a way to do this in LibreOffice. The solutions below would answer my question:

• An easy way (or just a way) to save document as folder and ability to reopen it would be just great since I can track it on git.
• Maybe another online platform or offline feature to do that excluding File > Version option since I can get into earlier versions but not track in that option.
• Any other solution

1 Answer

Well, I found a solution on saving and reopening it as a directory. When you save it, open it with an archive manager and extract to a folder.

Then, you can rebuild to reopen it by compressing as zip. Then, rename its extension as odt. Now it works.

However, that will not work if you try to have a README.md like additional files inside directory. So, you will need an extra directory to dump and rebuild.

This is one of solutions and will be accepted as valid answer if there does not occur any better one in three days.