GNU arch

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Introduction to arch

GNU arch is a revision control system, similar in purpose to tools such as CVS, SCCS, and Subversion. It is used to keep track of the changes made to a source tree and to help programmers combine and otherwise manipulate changes made by multiple people or at different times.

GNU arch has some features that make it particularly useful for public free software projects: it's easy to learn; it's inexpensive and easy to administer; it's a distributed system so there's no need to give write permission to every project participant; it has excellent support for the kinds of branching and merging that can make a free software project team shine.

It is somewhat well known, these days, that some of the core developers of the Linux kernel are using a revision control system which is not free software. There is a need to create a free software alternative to that system and to do so is one of the goals of the arch project

Another goal of the arch project is to help free software development projects work better: migrating from CVS or another system to arch should help your project operate more effectively. If you maintain a GNU or other free software project, please consider joining the gnu-arch-users mailing list and exploring how arch can benefit your efforts.

GNU Arch was created and written mainly by Tom Lord. GNU Arch 1 (also known as tla) is currently maintained by Andy Tai.

Downloading arch

GNU arch can be found on http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-arch/ [via HTTP] and ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-arch/ [via FTP]. It can also be found on one of our FTP mirrors. The latest release is version 1.3.5.

Snapshots of the latest development sources can be found at http://www.atai.org/gnuarch/snapshots/ and prerelease candidates of the next version can be found at http://www.atai.org/gnuarch/prereleases/

Development source can be obtained following these steps:

(assuming you have a copy of tla; if not, download an official release or a snapshot and build)

Once you have "tla" in your path, to check out for 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 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

arch Links


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Updated: $Date: 2006/11/20 07:32:14 $ $Author: ramprasadb $