If you've never used Arch, you should read some documentation about it. A good starting point is the Arch Wiki or our User Documentation (FAQ), but it covers only Arch usage at Gna!, not general issues.
Arch is a revision control system, similar in purpose to tools such as CVS, SCCS, and Subversion. It is used to keep track of the changes made to a source tree and to help programmers combine and otherwise manipulate changes made by multiple people or at different times.
There're few implementation of Arch. Most popular are tla and bazaar (baz). This documentation covers the common options of this two implementations.
Note that there are many graphical clients to access a Arch repository out there. This page will give instructions on accessing your project on the Gna! servers with the official command line client. Your mileage may vary.
This project's Arch repository can be checked out through anonymous access with the following instruction set. The module you wish to check out must be specified as the modulename. When prompted for a password for anoncvs, simply press the Enter key.
Sourcecode repository :'; print 'First you need to register (declare) the archive location :
'; print 'tla register-archive http://arch.gna.org/haplo/arch/archive-2004'; print '
This command output the name given to this archive, say anonymous@gna.org--public.
'; print '
Now you can download a particular branch of the project. In the following example, the branch is named mainline. If you don\'t know the naming scheme of the project you can have a look to archives browser.
'; print '
tla get -A anonymous@gna.org--public haplo--mainline'; ?>
When you update from within the module's directory (with tla update) you do not need the -A option anymore.