Mercurial
1. What is Mercurial
[http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/ Mercurial] is a Source Control Management system (or Version Control System, or several other names) written in Python and C. Unlike older SCMs like CVS or Subversion, and like Git and Bazaar, Mercurial is distributed; meaning that there is no central privileged repository. All users have a full copy of the source and the history. Current major projects that use it include [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mercurial Mozilla] and [http://openjdk.java.net/ Java].
2. Getting started
See below for some suggestions about configuration. Read the docs on the Mercurial and Mozilla Developer Center pages linked to above, and try
hg help
for decently full help about Mercurial commands.
3. Configuration
The configuration file for Mercurial is .hgrc in your home directory on Unix/Mac OS X, and Mercurial.ini in your profile directory (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\username\) on Windows.
3.1. Base configuration
The following sets the username and email address associated with your commits, tells Mercurial to use Git-style diffs, sets 4 lines of context around a change when showing a diff, and turns on support for patch queues and colorized output:
[ui] username = Firstname Lastname <username@yourdepartment.rochester.edu> [diff] git = 1 [defaults] diff=-p -U 4 qdiff = -U 4 [extensions] hgext.mq = color =
3.2. Mac extra config
Create a file called /usr/local/bin/opendiff-w (if it doesn't exist already) with the contents
# opendiff returns immediately, without waiting for FileMerge to exit. # Piping the output makes opendiff wait for FileMerge. opendiff "$@" | cat
and add the following to your .hgrc, which allows you to use opendiff from the Apple Developer Tools to do merges:
[merge-tools] filemerge.executable = opendiff-w filemerge.args = $local $other -ancestor $base -merge $output
3.3. Unix extra config
This sets [http://meld.sourceforge.net/ Meld] as the merge program. Add into the existing [ui] section.
[ui] merge = meld
3.4. Mac/Unix common extra config
Installing [http://colordiff.sourceforge.net/ ColorDiff] and adding this (into the existing sections where appropriate) gives you color diffs on the command line:
[defaults] cdiff = -q [extensions] hgext.extdiff = [extdiff] cmd.cdiff = colordiff opts.cdiff = -uprN
3.5. Windows extra config
To use Mercurial effectively on Windows you'll need to also install [http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ TortoiseSVN] (for TortiseMerge) and [http://www.cygwin.com/ Cygwin] (for command line ssh). It's also nice to install [http://tortoisehg.sourceforge.net/ TortoiseHg] for Windows Explorer integration with Mercurial.
As always, add these to the existing sections, but this time to your Mercurial.ini:
[ui] merge = TortiseMerge editor = gvim ssh = C:\cygwin\bin\ssh.exe [merge-tools] TortiseMerge.executable = C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortiseMerge.exe TortiseMerge.args = /mine:$local /theirs:$other /base:$base -o /merged:$output