1<title>Fossil Tips And Usage Hints</title>
2
3  1.  Click on nodes of any timeline graph to see diffs between the two
4      selected versions.
5
6  2.  Add the "--tk" option to "[/help?cmd=diff | fossil diff]" commands
7      to get a pop-up
8      window containing a complete side-by-side diff.  (NB:  The pop-up
9      window is run as a separate Tcl/Tk process, so you will need to
10      have Tcl/Tk installed on your machine for this to work.  Visit
11      [http://www.activestate.com/activetcl] to for a quick download of
12      Tcl/Tk if you do not already have it on your system.)
13
14  3.  The "[/help/clean | fossil clean -x]" command is a great
15      alternative to "make clean". You can use "[/help/clean | fossil clean -f]"
16      as a slightly safer alternative if the "ignore-glob" setting is
17      not set. WARNING: make sure you did a "fossil add" for all source-files
18      you plan to commit, otherwise those files will be deleted without warning.
19
20  4.  Use "[/help?cmd=all | fossil all changes]" to look for any uncommitted
21      edits in any of your Fossil projects.  Use
22      "[/help?cmd=all | fossil all pull]" on your laptop
23      prior to going off network (for example, on a long plane ride)
24      to make sure you have all the latest content locally.  Then run
25      "[/help/all|fossil all push]" when you get back online to upload
26      your changes.
27
28  5.  To see an entire timeline, type "all" into the "Max:" entry box.
29
30  6.  You can manually add a "c=CHECKIN" query parameter to the timeline
31      URL to get a snapshot of what was going on about the time of some
32      check-in.  The "CHECKIN" can be
33      [./checkin_names.wiki | any valid check-in or version name], including
34      tags, branch names, and dates.  For example, to see what was going
35      on in the Fossil repository on 2008-01-01, visit
36      [http://fossil-scm.org/home/timeline?c=2008-01-01].
37
38  7.  Further to the previous two hints, there are lots of query parameters
39      that you can add to timeline pages.  The available query parameters
40      are tersely documented [/help?cmd=/timeline | here].
41
42  8.  You can run "[/help?cmd=test-diff | fossil test-diff --tk $file1 $file2]"
43      to get a pop-up  window with side-by-side diffs of two files, even if
44      neither of the two files is part of any Fossil repository.  Note that
45      this command is "test-diff", not "diff".
46
47  9.  On web pages showing the content of a file (for example
48      [http://fossil-scm.org/home/artifact/c7dd1de9f]) you can manually
49      add a query parameter of the form "ln=FROM,TO" to the URL that
50      will cause the range of lines indicated to be highlighted.  This
51      is useful in pointing out a few lines of code using a hyperlink
52      in an email or text message.  Example:
53      [http://fossil-scm.org/home/artifact/c7dd1de9f?ln=28,30].
54      Adding the "ln" query parameter without any argument simply turns
55      on line numbers.   This feature only works right with files with
56      a mimetype of text/plain, of course.
57
58  10.  When editing documentation to be checked in as managed files, you can
59       preview what the documentation will look like by using the special
60       "ckout" branch name in the "doc" URL while running "fossil ui".
61       See the [./embeddeddoc.wiki | embedded documentation] for details.
62