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ArX Project Trees

One of the central organizing concepts of ArX is the project tree. For the most part, a project tree is an ordinary tree of files, directories and symbolic links -- all files that you create and maintain as part of your project.

In addition to the tree content you create, ArX itself maintains some control files in a project tree. You should regard these extra control files as part of your project's content. For example, if you distribute source for a program managed by ArX, you will ordinarilly want to include the control files: they are useful to other people.


Initializing a Project Tree

To initialize a project tree for the first time, from the root of the tree, use the command:

 
        % arx create-version (project name)

That will create a subdirectory, at the root of the tree, called {arch}. It will also open an editor for entering your initial log file. Most ArX control files are stored in the tree rooted at {arch}. You should never create, remove, or modify files there by hand.

When you have multiple project trees for related projects it is good practice to make them sibling directories. This is because ArX sometimes caches information in project trees and those caches can speed up some operations. When looking for information in a cache, ArX looks not only in the current project tree, but in any sibling project trees. For example, while working on ArX, I might have several copies of ArX, each for working on a different set of features:

 
        % cd ~/wd
        % ls
        ArX    ArX-branches   ArX-inventory   ArX-reporting

In this manual, ~/wd always refers to a "directory of project trees". (The convention means the same thing as, but is less cumbersome than ${PROJECT_TREES} -- there is no requirement that your directory of project trees be called ~/wd, or that you only have one such directory.)


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This document was generated by Walter Landry on April, 30 2003 using texi2html