• editing
• checking in
• changing file permissions
• renaming files
• removing files
• changing file permissions

This section explains how to do these common BitKeeper operations.

Checking Out And Editing Files

By default BitKeeper repositories do not automatically check-out files. Your directories may appear empty because of this default, to check out (not lock) the files in your current directory,

bk get

You may override this default with the ``checkout'' preference in the config file. See bk help config-etc or the repository cofiguration section.

To check out read only versions of files, use the bk get command.

To check out files for editing, you can either use bk get -e or use the bk edit command. With no arguments, the above commands will check out all the files in the directory. Use file names as arguments to checkout specific files, for example,

bk edit foo.c

It's also possible to use a shortcut to check out a locked version of a file and edit it by doing something like:
bk vi file or bk emacs file
(any editor can be used.)

It is also possible to set the environment such that editor file for example, vi file will check out the file for editing and open the file in vi. To do this:

set EDITOR=vi alias vi=`bk vi`

Again, this will work for any editor, vi is used as an example.

Miscellaneous File Operations

• Changing File Permissions
  BitKeeper stores revision history of file permissions just as it does the file contents. To change file permissions, use

  bk chmod file The command respects whatever syntax your native chmod command uses. It does this by running chmod on the file and then copying the resulting modes into the revision history.

• Renaming Files
  An advantage BitKeeper has over many other configuration management systems is that it keeps track of file names so renaming is easy. To rename a file, do

  bk mv file new_file

  Directories can be renamed in a similar manner with the command:

  bk mvdir dir new_dir

• Removing Files
  There are two ways to remove files from the source tree. The first, and safest, is

  bk rm file

  and the second, and irreversible, is

  bk gone file

  Using bk rm will move the file from your tree into the BitKeeper/deleted directory. All future operations will ignore the file unless you name it explicitly. In the event that you need to resurrect it, you may do that with

  bk unrm file

If you wish to obliterate all traces of a file use the bk gone command as follows:

bk gone `bk prs -hr+ -d:KEY: file` rm file SCCS/s.file