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A monotone workspace consists of control files and non-control files. Each type of file can be versioned or non-versioned. These classifications lead to four groups of files:
Control files contain special content formatted for use by monotone. Versioned files are recorded in a monotone database and have their state tracked as they are modified.
If a control file is versioned, it is considered part of the state of the workspace, and will be recorded as a manifest entry. If a control file is not versioned, it is used to manage the state of the workspace, but it not considered an intrinsic part of it.
Most files you manage with monotone will be versioned non-control files. For example, if you keep source code or documents in a monotone database, they are versioned non-control files. Non-versioned, non-control files in your workspace are generally temporary or junk files, such as backups made by editors or object files made by compilers. Such files are ignored by monotone.
Control files are identified by their names. Non-control files can have any name except the names reserved for control files. The names of control files follow a regular pattern:
The general intention is that versioned control files are things that you may want to edit directly. In comparison, you should never have to edit non-versioned control files directly; monotone should do that for you whenever it is appropriate. However, both are documented here, just in case a situation arises where you need to go “under the hood”.
The following control files are currently used. More control files may be added in the future, but they will follow the patterns given above.
Every workspace has a base revision, which is the revision that was
originally checked out to create that workspace. When the workspace
is committed, the base revision is considered to be the ancestor of
the committed revision.