Hi Folks, last week I tried fossil for the first time - I was able to understand the basic concepts. Then I created my first helloworld_test repository and even migrated an existing git repository to fossil - all that within 30 minutes, thanks to great documentation for the first steps.
I was really impressed by the simplicity and beauty of fossil to that point. Now I've spent about 1 hour to find out how to check out a branch in fossil. This might sound ridiculous, but I'm rather new to version control systems and here is what happened: I copied the former git repository to the server and cloned it. Then I opened it with fossil open. Only one file ".gitignore" showed up in my local directory. Then I tried the "fossil branch" command. $ fossil branch gcc_port * trunk Ok, all the files are in another branch. But how do I activate it? "fossil help branch" tells me it's used to "Run various subcommands to manage branches of the open repository", but actually only the command "new" and "list" are supported. I read the word "management" and expected it to include manipulation - but actually the branch command only creates and lists branches. Then I thought, there must be some command to checkout the repository. "fossil help" lists 43 commands, but not the "checkout" command. (I overlooked the hint about the -a, because I expected the "checkout" command to be one of the 10 most important commands). So I concluded the checkout command must have another name or the mechanism in fossil might be different from git. Then I started to search the documentation: http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/permutedindex.wiki http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/branching.wiki http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/quickstart.wiki http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/fiveminutes.wiki The branching website mentiones checkouts ... but no command. Then I used my favourite search engine to find the mailing list archives and *there* I found "fossil co" mentioned as an alias for "fossil checkout". There might be other users who try out fossil as their first VCS and the "fossil checkout" command is mentioned *nowhere* in the documentation for beginners. I think it should be *at least* * In the quick start guide, section "checking out a local tree" http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/quickstart.wiki * In the list of commands displayed by "fossil help" Regards, Michael _______________________________________________ fossil-users mailing list fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users
