• The GNU Arch Wiki

Welcome to the Arch Wiki!

Language list - This wiki in other languages

This wiki is for the GNU Arch Revision Control System. Arch is a distributed, changeset oriented revision control system that grants developers the ability to work independently and merge code with one another when and if they choose.

GNU Arch 1.x is now maintained by Andy Tai, with the support of Tom Lord, the original founder and author of Arch. Immediate tasks are merging some of the usability improvements and existing bug fixes into new releases. Significant functional enhancements may be added to the 1.x release slowly. Version 2.0, being developed by Tom, provides a better foundation for the next generation SCM system.

Starting Points and Links

Executive Overviews

• What is Arch?

• Why Arch?

• Comparison of Arch with Subversion and CVS

• Comparison of 13 version control systems -- Major capabilities like merging are missing from comparison

• Discussion of Arch and Subversion

• A Short Arch Example / Tutorial

Getting Started

• Getting Arch

  • Binaries:

    • Debian Packages

    • RPM Packages

    • Slackware Packages

  • Source:

    • Official Source Releases (current release is 1.3.5)

    • Development sources in the following Arch archive:

      • Archive: atai@atai.org--public http://www.atai.org/archarchives/atai@atai.org--public/

        • (mirrored at http://arch.savannah.gnu.org/archives/gnu-arch/atai@atai.org--public/ ) branch (tree id): tla--atai--1.3

      (GPG signed; Mp3 public key)

    • Development snapshots

    • Release candidates of the next version

    • how to obtain the latest sources

• Installing Arch -- generic instructions

  • Platform-specific installation tips:

    • FreeBSD

    • Mac OS X

    • Sun Solaris

    • Native Win32 Support

    • BeOS

    • PlayStation 2 Linux

Using Arch

Frequently Asked Questions

• Learning Arch commands for CVS users

• Why does Arch use these funky file names?

• Source Tree Workplaces over NFS are slow

• Moving project between Arch archives

• Ask Arch questions -- Ask if your question is not answered anywhere else

User Guides

• Quick Introduction

• Tla Reference : tla commands

• Tla Files : files used by tla

• Mini Howtos

• Arch Tutorial (work in progress, may be incomplete) (old copy may be out of date but complete for tla version earlier than 1.3.4)

• A Brief introduction to Arch, Russian translation, German Translation, Simplified Chinese translation

• Arch tutorial for those with short attention spans -- Targets Emacs users

• Arch Recipes

• ID-tagging methods

• Merging with Arch Overview of merge commands with suggestions

• Interoperating with CVS

• How to perform Centralized Development

• Tracking a project that doesn't use Arch

• Using hooks to automate tasks

• Cycling Archives

• Informative mailinglist posts

• Sealing and fixing

• Glossary

• Mirroring Archives

• Signing Archives

• Versioning strategies -- Ways to use arch to meet your versioning needs

• Remote access -- Accessing a remote archive with arch

• Controlling Home Directories With Arch

• Backing up and restoring Arch archives

• Creating and emailing patches

• Using build-configs

• Hosting Arch archive on Savannah and SourceForge

• Process *.rej files or dealing with conflicts

• BKCVS to Arch Script for Linux Kernel

• Create a man page for tla (or baz)

• GNU Arch Commands Quick Reference made after Arch tutorial

Related Software

• GUI Front-ends for Arch

• Arch Revision Browsers

• Additional Tools for use with Arch

• graphing relations

Alternative Arch implementations

• Bazaar 1.0, formerly maintained by Robert Collins and supported by Canonical. It has been abandoned in favor of Bazaar 2.0, which is not based on Arch.

More about Arch

Resources

Arch discussion:

• gnu-arch-users Mailing List

• gnu-arch-users Mailing List Archives

• gnu-arch-dev, Arch development Mailing List ( non-functioning since September 2005; use the gnu-arch-user list instead)

• gnu-arch-dev, Arch development Mailing List Archives

• Arch Forum - Nabble is currently archiving Arch mailing lists into a forum. One can browse or search the Arch posts easily. The UI is clean and the search is good.

• Channel #arch on irc.freenode.net. Public archive available (currently not available).

• Arch quotes

• Version Control Systems software

• Web Sites that Discuss Arch

• What is sourcecontrol.net?

• Developer Talks -- How to get an arch developer to speak at your user group or company

• Conventions between front-ends

• Arch versus -- how Arch compares to other systems

Arch archives (aka repositories):

• Archive Registry

• Public Arch archives mirrored at sourcecontrol.net.

• Arch Mirrors

• ArchUtilityCode

Development

• Bazaar Roadmap

• Bug Tracking System (GNU Arch bug tracker at Savannah.gnu.org)

  • Merge Request Format proposed by RobinGreen

• Subproject tracking

• tla Code Style Some of the coding conventions used in tla

• New Arch Devel process

Live Discussions

• Discuss this Wiki

• Discuss Arch features

• Discuss Next-Generation Changesetformat

• Why not Arch

• Ask Arch questions -- Please ask here, not on non-discussion pages

Requests for Comments

The RFC list was getting a bit long, so I've moved it to RequestsForComments

Copyright information: on this Wiki, each page is licensed under theGNU General Public License; version 2 of the License*. By editing such pages, you release your contributions under this license. Please respect other people's copyrights. (* Yes, this is not a typo. All such pages are licensed specifically only under Version 2 of the GPL license.)