view help/topics/10.txt @ 494:41a156d439d0

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{Opening and initialising things}

Someone gave me a repository URL and asked me to clone it

A Mercurial repository location is usually described by a URL, like
that of a website.

For example, the URL for the repository containing the source code for
EasyMercurial itself is @https://bitbucket.org/cannam/easyhg@.

To get a copy of the files in a repository, you need to _clone_ the
repository from the remote URL into a folder on your own computer.  To
do this,

*1. Click the Open toolbar button or use File -> Open*

#openremote50.png

*2. Select "Remote Repository" as the thing you want to open*

*3. Enter the repository URL into the URL field*

*4. Give the name of a folder on your local computer to clone into* --
 this folder will be created for you, so it shouldn't be one that already
 exists

*5. Click OK*

If the remote repository has restricted access, you may be asked to
provide a username and password to log in to the server it is hosted
on.  If the repository is large, you may have to wait a while for all the
data to be transferred.

Provided the clone has been successful, you should now have a local
repository to work in.