BK-EMACS(1)

💅 BK-EMACS(1) 💅

okay so bestie, this is the bk emacs page from the BitKeeper User’s Manual, and it’s literally “info on how to use emacs’ vc‐mode.” It’s giving “mostly works, but respect the caveats,” so let’s get into it. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

bk emacs — info on how to use emacs’ vc‐mode. That’s the name, no cap.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

BitKeeper is similar to SCCS, and vc‐mode more or less supports SCCS, so most of the things you can do with vc‐mode work, fr fr: visit‐file will check out files automatically, C‐x C‐q locks files for editing, C‐x v v will prompt for comments and check in an individual file, C‐x v = will compare versions, and so on. Iconic.

Filename completion doesn’t know about sfiles; this appears to be a general problem with vc‐mode, not a BitKeeper specific issue. So don’t blame BK for that one. 🙈

You cannot create changesets with vc‐mode; use bk citool or bk commit. That’s the rule. Also vc‐mode does not understand BitKeeper’s symbol handling, as that was not part of the original SCCS.

⚠️ Do not attempt to use vc’s symbol, snapshot, and branch commands with BitKeeper. Just don’t. Periodt. 💀

vc‐mode expects to be able to refer to SCCS commands directly instead of via the BitKeeper front end. In theory, it should suffice to put

setq vc‐path /usr/local/bitkeeper

in .emacs, but this didn’t work when last tested (most of the BK developers use vi 😭 — a betrayal). The commands vc wants to run are: admin, get, delta, unedit, stripdel, and bk log. This just happens to be the list of commands that we symlink into /usr/bin during a standard installation. Slay.

If you check in a file using bk citool or bk delta in a shell window, vc‐mode will not notice; you can go right on editing the buffer, and BitKeeper will get very confused the next time you try to check out the file (locked or not). Not me watching the chaos unfold. 🫠

The right way to get out of this mess is to kill off the offending buffer, rename the modified file out of the way, check out the file for editing, and rename it back. Do all the rearrangement from a shell prompt. And kill all your buffers before running bk citool to avoid the problem. That’s the whole rescue plan, bestie. 🎀

🎀 CATEGORY 🎀

Compat — that’s the category, periodt. 👑

footer sign-off vibes: BitKeeper Inc · version 1E1 · date none (bk emacs(none)) — mwah, ty for reading, bestie 💖✨