First, we'll start by creating a simple directory to work in. For the purposes of our test drive, we're going to simply use C:\BK as our directory. This is the directory we will use to hold the repositories we clone and work in while we're working in BitKeeper. You can create whatever directory you like for your test drive.

Navigate to C: Right-click on the white background of the Explorer window. Click New -> Folder. Rename the newly-created folder BK.

Now that we have our directory setup, the first thing we'll do is clone a repository. Let's open Windows Explorer and navigate to our directory. Again, you can see in the screenshots that we're using C:\BK as our directory. Yours may be different.

Right-click on the white background of your Explorer window. Click BitKeeper -> Clone a Repository...

A small dialog will popup asking for some information about what you want to clone and where you want to put it. For the purposes of this test drive, we're just going to clone the demo repository.

Check the Get the demo repository box. Click the Clone button.

After clicking the Clone button, you will see a command prompt window pop up and some data start flying by. Don't worry. That's normal. While the Windows Explorer plugin makes it easy to navigate BitKeeper in the Windows world, it is still a command line tool for many of its functions. You will see a command window popup like this from time to time, but it's usually only there to show you what is going on as BitKeeper performs the requested action.

Once the clone is complete, the command window will be left open to show you what happened and/or to let you perform further command line actions. Your window should look something like this, but it may not be exact depending on your version of BitKeeper.

Close the command prompt window.

Now your directory should look something like this:

If the clone doesn't work for some reason, you might need to tell BitKeeper about your HTTP proxy if you are behind one. You can do this with:

Open a command prompt. set http_proxy=http://your_proxy.your_company.com:80/

For more information about methods of accessing repositories, see the url manual page in the helptool. You can launch helptool like this:

Right-click anywhere in Explorer. Click BitKeeper -> Help... Click More Help...