Source management tools for lilypond projects

[Urs Liska]

Hi list,

I wonder how other people manage their sources in larger lilypond projects.

Currently I'm working on a project whose source folders contain ~300 
files, most of them LilyPond source files.

One thing I really have come to love LilyPond for during this project is 
the fact that several people can work on the same scores at the same 
time - a result from the text based input approach. (For example: I (as 
the 'editor') can apply quick fixes to the musical text directly and 
don't have to ask the 'engraver' to do this)

But then the question of source management arises.
For the current project we have the whole file structure in a Dropbox 
folder. This is practical but also not really adequate - we have to do 
kind of 'file locks' through email ("I'm going to edit this file, please 
don't touch it until I tell you again") ...
It's OK (as we are basically only two guys), but something I'm feeling 
quite uneasy with.

So are there any practical ideas or experiences for a source management 
for lilypond projects?

I have some ideas about but no experience with the usual tools for 
software development.
It would be nice to
- have a lilypond project hosted on a central server
- at least have mechanisms to checkout/lock files for individual editing
- maybe have the ability to diff/merge or something similar.
- maybe have the ability to assign 'roles' to different contributors 
(manage rights to grant rights for specific actions (read, edit, compile 
...) or specific files)

Ideally it should be possible to have several independent projects 
within the same file system so that one can implement libraries that are 
common to all projects. But that's not really necessary.
And OTOH the solution shouldn't be too big, i.e. it should be adequate 
for projects with 'only' 200 or 500 files.

Any ideas?
Are there other people with the need or practical experience with source 
management strategies for LilyPond projects?

Best
Urs