The GNU Arch Revision Control System

Quick Links:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gnu-arch -- the primary distribution site for GNU Arch.

http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-arch-users -- the gnu-arch-users mailing list.

http://lists.seyza.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnu-arch-dev -- the gnu-arch-dev mailling list.

http://wiki.gnuarch.org -- the Arch Wiki, maintained by users.

Orientation

There are quite a few branches of Arch and different places to get different distributions. Of greatest interest to most users are these three (the links provide further information about each version, including download links and the like):

GNU Arch 1.x also known as tla. This version is released via the GNU project. It is relatively stable workhorse meaning that major new features are not being added and it can take a while between releases for minor bugs to be fix.

GNU Arch 1 (also known as tla) is currently maintained by Andy Tai. The latest development sources can be obtained as follows:

(assuming you have a copy of tla; if not, install the tla package of your OS or distribution (if available); otherwise obtain the latest releases from ftp.gnu.org and build on your machine)

Once you have "tla" in your path, at the first time, do

  cd your_work_directory
  tla register-archive http://www.atai.org/archarchives/lord@emf.net--2005-MIRROR/
  tla register-archive http://www.atai.org/archarchives/atai@atai.org--public/
  tla get atai@atai.org--public/tla--atai-dists--1.3.4 tlasrc
  cd tlasrc
  tla build-config config

Then, afterwards, you can

   cd tlasrc/tla
   tla update
 

to sync your copy with the latest source. The official sources are signed with this PGP public key

Alternatively, you can access the daily snapshots at http://www.atai.org/gnuarch/

Canonical Corp's Bazaar also known as baz is a branch of tla. Releases are made frequently with an emphasis on user interface changes and performance tweaks.

GNU Arch 2.0 also known as revc. This version is released by the GNU Arch maintainer and is an entirely new source base -- not a branch. revc radically simplifies Arch while simultaneously generalizing it, all with less and simpler code.

Reference and Historic Pages

At various times over the years I've put up pages explaining this or that about Arch. Over time, these tend to become slightly outdated -- Arch evolves a little out from under them, or errors are discovered in the pages, or better ways are found to say the same thing. Nevertheless, people still seem to find them useful and squawk a bit when they are taken down so here is a list of favorites.

Note: These pages describe GNU Arch 1.x -- they are not very useful for learning about GNU Arch 2.0.

An Overview of GNU Arch

How Arch Works

What is Revision Control?

Branch Info

{GNU Arch 2.0}

GNU Arch 2.0 (revc)is a thorough rewrite of Arch, combining the best concepts from the tla branches (GNU Arch 1.x and Bazaar) with great ideas from systems such as baz-ng, git, and monotone.

More detailed News about Arch 2.0 is available on this site.

{GNU Arch 1.x}

This release can be downloaded from 'ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu-arch' and other GNU mirrors. The most recent release is tla-1.3.3.

{Canonical Corp's Bazaar}

The main portal for this version of Arch is http://bazaar.canonical.com/.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2005 Tom Lord (lord@emf.net)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this software; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.