Editing GNU arch (section)

== History and maintainership ==

=== GNU arch version 1 and tla ===
The original author and [[Software maintainer|maintainer]] of GNU arch was Thomas Lord who started the project in 2001. The command used to manipulate GNU arch repositories is '''tla''', an initialism for ''Tom Lord's Arch''. Lord started GNU arch as a collection of [[shell script]]s to provide an alternative to CVS.<ref>{{cite news
|last=Moffit
|first=Nick
|url=http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7671
|work=[[Linux Journal]]
|title=Revision Control with Arch: Introduction to Arch
|date=2004-11-01
|access-date=2008-06-18}}</ref> In 2003, ''arch'' became part of the [[GNU]] project.<ref>{{Cite mailing list
 |last=Lord 
 |first=Tom 
 |title=GNU, doc foo, short-term plans, hacking suggestions, money 
 |url=http://ml.osdir.com/version-control.arch.user/2003-07/msg00833.html
 |date=2003-07-13 
 |access-date=2008-06-18 
 |mailing-list=arch-users 
}}{{dead link|date=January 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

The GNU arch project [[fork (software)|fork]]ed several times, resulting in both [[Canonical Ltd.]]'s now abandoned [[Bazaar (software)#Baz: an earlier Canonical Ltd version control system|Baz]] fork and Walter Landry's ArX project. Both forks provoked a hostile reaction: the ArX fork was due to a serious dispute in direction and Lord was strongly critical of Canonical's approach to announcing the Baz project.<ref>{{Cite mailing list
|last=Lord
|first=Thomas
|title=community spirit
|date=2004-10-31
|url=http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2004-10/msg00771.html
|mailing-list=gnu-arch-users
|access-date=2008-06-17}}</ref>

In August 2005 Lord announced that he was resigning as the maintainer of GNU arch and recommended that Baz become the main GNU arch project.<ref>{{Cite mailing list
|last=Lord
|first=Thomas
|title=GNU Arch maintainership
|url=http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2005-08/msg00030.html
|date=2005-08-15
|access-date=2008-06-17
|mailing-list=gnu-arch-users}}</ref>  However, this did not happen: the Baz fork was abandoned by Canonical in favour of the separate [[Bazaar (software)|Bazaar]] project,<ref>{{cite web
  | title = Baz1x - Bazaar Version Control
  | date = 2006-07-24
  | url = http://bazaar-vcs.org/Baz1x
  | access-date = 2008-01-17
  | archive-date = 2008-01-07
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080107203210/http://bazaar-vcs.org/Baz1x
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref><ref name="historywiki">{{cite web
  | last = Arbash Meinel
  | first = John
  | author2 = Aaron Bentley
  | author3 = Martin Pool
  | author4 = Mark Shuttleworth
  | title = HistoryOfBazaar
  | date = 2006-07-26
  | url = http://bazaar-vcs.org/HistoryOfBazaar
  | access-date = 2008-02-20
  | archive-date = 2009-02-26
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090226181637/http://bazaar-vcs.org/HistoryOfBazaar
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref> with the 1.5 release of Baz being scrapped in 2006.<ref name="end-of-baz">{{cite mailing list
 |last=Collins 
 |first=Robert 
 |title=releasing 1.5 
 |mailing-list=bazaar-old 
 |date=2006-06-30 
 |url=https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar-old/2006-June/000531.html 
 |access-date=2007-06-16 
 |url-status=dead 
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110512173621/https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar-old/2006-June/000531.html 
 |archive-date=2011-05-12 
}}</ref> In October, 2005, Andy Tai announced that Lord and the [[Free Software Foundation]] had accepted his offer to be the maintainer of GNU arch.<ref>{{Cite mailing list
|last=Tai
|first=Andy
|url=http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2005-10/msg00246.html
|date=2005-10-27
|title=Re: Good News about GNU Arch!
|access-date=2008-06-17
|mailing-list=gnu-arch-users}}</ref> Tai subsequently merged many features from Baz back into tla,<ref name="end-of-baz"/> but in March 2008 indicated that tla was no longer under active development and was no longer competitive with other version control systems.<ref name="arch-status-2008"/>

=== revc ===

revc was a prototype revision control project by Thomas Lord that he intended to become GNU arch 2.0, designed to be a radical departure from tla and to draw many ideas from the [[Git (software)|Git]] revision control system.<ref name="revc-announce">{{Cite mailing list
 |url=http://ml.osdir.com/version-control.arch.devel/2005-06/msg00034.html
 |last=Lord 
 |first=Thomas 
 |date=2005-06-20 
 |access-date=2008-06-17 
 |title=arch 2.0 code base in progress 
 |mailing-list=gnu-arch-dev 
}}{{dead link|date=January 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> It was announced in June 2005,<ref name="revc-announce"/> the first pre-release was in July<ref name="revc-release">{{Cite mailing list
 |last        = Lord
 |first       = Thomas
 |title       = GNU Arch 2.0 -- first source
 |url         = http://osdir.com/ml/version-control.arch.devel/2005-07/msg00006.html
 |date        = 2005-07-08
 |access-date  = 2008-06-17
 |mailing-list = gnu-arch-dev
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20110517201422/http://osdir.com/ml/version-control.arch.devel/2005-07/msg00006.html
 |archive-date = 2011-05-17
 |url-status     = dead
}}</ref> and the last in August, just prior to Lord's resignation as maintainer.<ref>{{Cite mailing list
|url=http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2005-08/msg00009.html
|last=Lord
|first=Thomas
|title=Arch 2.0 release (revc.0.0x2)
|date=2005-08-01
|access-date=2008-06-17
|mailing-list=gnu-arch-users}}</ref> revc only had 10 core commands and Lord intended to eliminate restrictive namespaces, complicated file naming conventions and increase the speed.<ref name="revc-release"/>

As of 2008 the last pre-release, 0.0x2, of revc is still available<ref>{{Cite mailing list
|last = Wandrebeck
|first = Laurent
|url = http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2008-03/msg00000.html
|title = revc
|mailing-list = gnu-arch-users
|date=2008-03-26
|access-date=2008-06-17}}</ref> and Lord was still interested in some of the ideas in GNU arch but did not have the resources to resume development of revc.<ref>{{Cite mailing list
|last = Lord
|first = Thomas
|url = http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2008-03/msg00005.html
|title = Re: revc
|date=2008-03-28
|access-date=2008-06-17
|mailing-list=gnu-arch-users}}</ref>
Thomas Lord died in June 2022.<ref>{{Citation
|url = https://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-06-26/article/49837
|date=2022-06-26
|title = Thomas Lord 1966-2022}}</ref>