1.1 --- a/en/tour.tex	Wed Oct 04 15:15:54 2006 -0700
     1.2 +++ b/en/tour.tex	Wed Oct 04 17:11:53 2006 -0700
     1.3 @@ -75,6 +75,62 @@
     1.4    work. XXX Flesh this out.
     1.5  \end{note}
     1.6  
     1.7 +\section{Getting started}
     1.8 +
     1.9 +To begin, we'll use the \hgcmd{version} command to find out whether
    1.10 +Mercurial is actually installed properly.  The actual version
    1.11 +information that it prints isn't so important; it's whether it prints
    1.12 +anything at all that we care about.
    1.13 +\interaction{tour.version}
    1.14 +
    1.15 +\subsection{Built-in help}
    1.16 +
    1.17 +Mercurial provides a built-in help system.  This invaluable for those
    1.18 +times when you find yourself stuck trying to remember how to run a
    1.19 +command.  If you are completely stuck, simply run \hgcmd{help}; it
    1.20 +will print a brief list of commands, along with a description of what
    1.21 +each does.  If you ask for help on a specific command (as below), it
    1.22 +prints more detailed information.
    1.23 +\interaction{tour.help}
    1.24 +For a more impressive level of detail (which you won't usually need)
    1.25 +run \hgcmdargs{help}{\hggopt{-v}}.  The \hggopt{-v} option is short
    1.26 +for \hggopt{--verbose}, and tells Mercurial to print more information
    1.27 +than it usually would.
    1.28 +
    1.29 +\section{Working with a repository}
    1.30 +
    1.31 +In Mercurial, everything happens inside a \emph{repository}.  The
    1.32 +repository for a project contains all of the files that ``belong to''
    1.33 +that project, along with a historical record of the project's files.
    1.34 +
    1.35 +There's nothing particularly magical about a repository; it is simply
    1.36 +a directory tree in your filesystem that Mercurial treats as special.
    1.37 +You can rename delete a repository any time you like, using either the
    1.38 +command line or your file browser.
    1.39 +
    1.40 +\subsection{Making a copy of a repository}
    1.41 +
    1.42 +\emph{Copying} a repository is just a little bit special.  While you
    1.43 +could use a normal file copying command to make a copy of a
    1.44 +repository, it's best to use a built-in command that Mercurial
    1.45 +provides.  This command is called \hgcmd{clone}, because it creates an
    1.46 +identical copy of an existing repository.
    1.47 +\interaction{tour.clone}
    1.48 +If our clone succeeded, we should now have a local directory called
    1.49 +\dirname{hello}.  This directory will contain some files.
    1.50 +\interaction{tour.ls}
    1.51 +These files have the same contents and history in our repository as
    1.52 +they do in the repository we cloned.
    1.53 +
    1.54 +Every Mercurial repository is complete, self-contained, and
    1.55 +independent.  It contains its own private copy of a project's files
    1.56 +and history.  A cloned repository remembers the location of the
    1.57 +repository it was cloned from, but it does not communicate with that
    1.58 +repository, or any other, unless you tell it to.
    1.59 +
    1.60 +What this means for now is that we're free to experiment with our
    1.61 +repository, safe in the knowledge that it's a private ``sandbox'' that
    1.62 +won't affect anyone else.
    1.63  
    1.64  %%% Local Variables: 
    1.65  %%% mode: latex