Remark: a variant can also mean a preliminary version.
- Short answer
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It’ll create additional effort to keep variants. Are you sure you want to invest that? If the answer is “yes”, use some kind of tagging or labelling to distinguish between versions and variants.
Long answer
We have tried several options:
1.) You may attach some kind of markers or stereotypes to your variants, and generate your documentation according to these stereotypes. Think of these markers as labels or categories.
2.) In case you use a wiki system - some of those allow stereotypes or labels on pages.
3.) You can keep variants in “modules”, where you have some common parts, and the variants as specialisations or addons of these common parts. Have a look at question J-1, which covers very large systems, but replace subsystems by variants.