The idea is simple. You have a project with a number of developers. With a
revision control system like CVS, it's obvious that the project code will be
kept in a single repository, which all the developers use. You really don't
have much of a choice.

But arch is fully distributed. You want to take advantage of those features,
allowing your developers to commit while disconnected (say while they are
travelling with a laptop), easily create their own temporary branches without
affecting the main repository, and more. To accomplish these things, each
developer needs to have their own arch archive.

This then raises a question - where is the project? One solution is to pick a
specific developer to perform the task of merging in the other developer's
code. That developer's archive becomes the canonical one for the project.

However, there is a better way. The main idea of the tla patch queue manager is
to have a special archive which is managed entirely by the patch queue
software.

• Alexey Voinov

• arch-pqm