I'm supposed to post a small introductory guide to gnu arch with respect to SXEmacs development here:

Preliminaries:

• gnu arch is a concept and tla is an implementation of gnu arch
• Nonetheless I'll use both terms as synonyms

Step by step guide to your check-out of the mainline

• Download and compile arch tla:
  Visit ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-arch and fetch some recent version
• Generate your arch-id:
  tla my-id "Sebastian Freundt <hroptatyr@sxemacs.org>"
  (of course use your own names there ;P)
• Registering Steve's archive:
  tla register-archive steve@sxemacs.org--2006 http://arch.sxemacs.org/2006
• Check out the sxemacs main line:
  tla get -A steve@sxemacs.org--2006 sxemacs--main--22.1.4 sxemacs

Okay, now you have a directory sxemacs (your checkout of steves category) in your wd to examine.

Step by step guide to create you own branch of the mainline

• Generate your archive:
  tla make-archive -s -l hroptatyr@sxemacs.org--sxemacs
<location> may be anything you can access that archive easily.
  The modern way of dealing with this is to have a location on the local file system (specified by an absolute path) and a mirror somewhere at some webspace.

  See also next point.

  the -s flag is for signed archives which we use here at the SXEmacs world the -l flag is for listing which isn't important if you don't distribute your archive via http
  BEWARE: at least Steve has to read from your archive, so if you use some location like sftp://some.host be sure to also provide a login for him. Again the solution is mirroring:

• Generate a mirror:
  You can establish a mirror of your archive to provide read-access to everybody. Common scenarios are: archive stored locally via filesystem and mirrored on some webspace with read-access to everybody.
  Again, if you want to avoid fiddling with the magics of a setup of webDAV you probably want to have the --listing (-l) flag enabled at your mirror destination
  tla make-archive -s -l -m <archive-name> <mirror-location> archive-name is the archive you want to mirror, e.g. hroptatyr@sxemacs.org--sxemacs in my case
  <mirror-location> is some uri to reach the mirror. Note: This is YOUR path for WRITING TO the mirror
  For instance: If you have a provider of webspace who grants you access to your web-content via sftp use sftp://user@machine/path/to/web-content/ here
  Your uri for the outside world of that directory can then be: http://some.machine/path/to/arch/
• tagging the mainline:
  tla tag -S steve@sxemacs.org--2006/sxemacs--main--22.1.4 sxemacs--<your-branch>--22.1.4
<your-branch> is some indicator to your branch, i use hrop as it is my nick name of my irc nick name, but be creative :)
• Checkout your branch:
  Checking out your own branch after tagging the mainline is just basically a `tla get' of the mainline but on behalf of your branch
  tla get sxemacs--<your-branch>--22.1.4 sxemacs
  should establish a directory sxemacs, which is your personal version of sxemacs in your personal archive

Okay that's it. Now it merely comes to distributing your archive to the world

• Mirror your archive to the world-reachable location after editing stuff:
  tla archive-mirror

Step by step guide to dealing with signed archives

• Go to ~/.arch-params
• Create a directory signing there and cd to it
• Pump a default checking rule into it:
  echo "gpg --verify-files -" > \=default.check
• Pump a default signature rule into it:
  echo "gpg --clearsign" > \=default

That's it. Now you can securely verify revisions which are signed. For SXEmacs archives this is a must!

Summary

Fine, now you're an arch guru :) Wait, until I have some problems with arch, I will contact you immediately begging for help :)

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Updated: 2006-01-03 11:12 (UTC)

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