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
  brz init
  brz add
  brz commit -m "Initial import"

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

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

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

``brz add`` then finds all the files and directories it thinks
ought to be version controlled and registers them internally.
``brz 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::

  brz init-shared-repo my.repo
  cd my.repo
  brz init my.main
  cd my.main
  hack, hack, hack
  brz add
  brz 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-shared-repo`` and ``init`` commands both take a path as an
argument and will create that path if it doesn't already exist.