Scrivener, Git and Version Control for Writers

Scrivener is a writing application geared toward structuring and editing novel- and thesis-sized works. It is mainly used by writers and academics to organize works that would otherwise be unwieldy in a linear editor.

Scrivener projects are laid out as application bundles with the .scriv extension, and, as it turns out, are amenable to Git version control for writers: That is to say, Scrivener stores internal textual assets as separate files in ASCII-encoded RTF format. If you would like to use Git to track Scrivener changes, you are welcome to bootstrap off of the included starter.scriv project. It has the benefit of strategically placed .gitignore files to prevent transient metadata from cluttering your git status view and being incorporated into revision history.