Mail by sasha, should be rewritten as a HOWTO sometimes
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I have set up a repository with BitKeeper on work. There are still some things
about it that I would like to learn, but I have gotten far enough with it to
replace CVS functionality were are currently using, so let's just go ahead and
get started on it. Please follow the instructions below (make sure to save the
message for future reference):

a) http://www.bitmover.com/download
        user: beta
        password: get bitkeeper

  get the version appropriate for your platform - download it to a temp
directory, chmod +x  and then run it. You will have to tell it which directory
to install, for consistency, let's use /usr/local/bin

b) we will take advantage of bk capablity of working with master/slave
repositories. The master will be on work.mysql.com, the slaves will be our
individual machines. The master repository has already been set up on work, so
you will need just to set up a slave repository on your machine:

  mkdir bk
  cd bk
  bk clone yourusername@work:/home/bk/mysql mysql
  cd mysql
  bk -r edit

Now you have the entire source tree in the current directory. Let's compile it:

 BUILD/compile-pentium-debug

After you edit a file, you need to check it in using bk citool or bk ci
filename. Note that ci is different than commit - you ci a file, but you commit
a change set. This is a very nice concept - instead of thinking of each
individual file as CVS does, bk groups the changes you are making and allows you
to document what you actually did between the commits as a whole, rather than
just commenting on every file. When you commit, bk will ask you to comment on
the change set.

Commit is done just to your local repository. To make your changes global, you
will need to run bk push. Be careful with that - it is a good idea to run bk
push -l -n first too see what you are just about to push to the master
repository.

When somebody does a push, you will be getting a email ( I will set this up to
day). You will then need to execute bk pull to update your sources. If there are
any conflicts, bk will force you to resolve them by asking you questions on what
to do with each conflict.

To learn more about bk, use bk helptool - I will be doing this a lot in the next
couple of days :-) If you find bugs or have questions/feature
suggestions/comments for developers, feel free to e-mail dev@bitmover.com .
Their developers, and especially the president of the company Larry McVoy really
like MySQL and are very anxious to help us. Make sure it is obvious that you
work for MySQL, of course. And, of course, do not bug them with little things
that you can figure out on your own or with my help - they were nice to offer us
support, but we should not abuse it.