Starting a project
==================

Putting an existing project under version control
-------------------------------------------------

If you already have a tree of source code (or directory of documents) you
wish to put under version control, here are the commands to use::

  cd my-stuff
  bzr init
  bzr add
  bzr commit -m "Initial import"

``bzr init`` creates a ``.bzr`` directory in the top level directory
(``my-stuff`` in the example above). Note that:

 * Bazaar has everything it needs in that directory - you do
   **not** need to setup a database, web server or special service
   to use it

 * Bazaar is polite enough to only create one ``.bzr`` in the
   directory given, not one in every subdirectory thereof.

``bzr add`` then finds all the files and directories it thinks
ought to be version controlled and registers them internally.
``bzr commit`` then records a snapshot of the content of these
and records that information, together with a commit message.

More information on ``init``, ``add`` and ``commit`` will be provided
later. For now, the important thing to remember is the recipe above.

Starting a new project
----------------------

If you are starting a project from scratch, you can also use the recipe
above, after creating an empty directory first of course. For efficiency
reasons that will be explored more in later chapters though, it is a good
idea to create a repository for the project at the top level and to nest
a *main* branch within it like this::

  bzr init-repo my.repo
  cd my.repo
  bzr init my.main
  cd my.main
  hack, hack, hack
  bzr add
  bzr commit -m "Initial import"

Some users prefer a name like *trunk* or *dev* to *main*. Choose
whichever name makes the most sense to you.

Note that the ``init-repo`` and ``init`` commands both take a path as an
argument and will create that path if it doesn't already exist.