•  10-07-2019
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Question

I have just begun working on a project which uses Mercurial as a version control system, and I need some basic tips on how to use this. Please use this question to give some introductory tips on this technology.

Especially, I am looking for tips on the best programs to use and the best techniques to use (branches, in and out-checking etc. I need to learn the best-practices!)

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Solution

I know you already have the Mercurial site but the resource most useful to me was the Mercurial book. It's an excellent overview of the program and how to use it.

I found the best way to learn Mercurial was just to use it on a project. I imported into Mercurial a project I had exported from subversion and did some regular development with it. I made sure to clone the repository for different changesets so that I could get used to the merging and updating. I haven't learned all of the advanced uses but I'm now on a pretty firm footing with it and haven't switched back to Subversion yet.

A lot of projects have different techniques for commit workflow. Some have changes pushed from the developers, like centralized systems, and some will pull the changes from contributors (Linux, for example). It's hard to generalize too much without knowing the process for your project.

This is how I do my development:

  • Centralized tree on a file share or http, called project-trunk or project that is the definitive project version
  • A clean tree on my system that I clone from the remote repository and use to push back to the repository. I then clone from this tree for my changes. I call this tree project-local
  • Clone the project-local tree for each of my changes: eg. project-addusers, project-141, etc.
  • After I am finished with the commits to a tree, I then push the changes to the project-local repository
  • Finally, push the changes in the project-local to project-trunk

I have the clean project-local tree because then I can push all the changesets back to the trunk at one time, which is helpful if there is a group of related changes that need to push back together.

As for tools, it depends on your platform. I just use the vanilla command line tool. Coming from TortoiseSVN, it was a bit of a change to go to the command line. But I'm fine with it now. I tried using TortoiseHg but it didn't function well on my Windows 7 x64 virtual machine. I hear it's much better on the supported 32-bit platforms.

OTHER TIPS

Here is a helpful tutorial on Mercurial written by Joel Spolsky.

It covers basic usage and commands, as well as how to work with Mercurial at a more conceptual level. If you are already familiar with SVN, then the first part is definitely worth reading: it talks about the major conceptual differences between SVN and Mercurial, because trying to use Mercurial in the same way that you use SVN is asking for trouble.

Have a look at the Mercurial book, or at this Mercurial tutorial.

Depending on your background with other source control tools, I would also suggest a specific SCM-whatever to Mercurial guide. For example, have a look at this guide for Subversion users.

Another good resource for getting your head around the whole "distributed" source control idea is: http://betterexplained.com/articles/intro-to-distributed-version-control-illustrated/ ... with helpful diagrams!

If you use the latest TortoiseHG client and include the install directory in your PATH environment, you will be able to use both the nice GUI they provide, and the command line 'hg'

I cannot recommend using the mq extensions too much. They make for a great 'working repository' environment.

I use the queues to manage local changes against a subversion repository. I do my local short term changes and use mercurial to keep in sync with subversion and the rest of the team.

A few of Steve Losh's blog posts are good, even though they're a couple of year old now. They mainly deal with how to work with branching.

It's also worth looking at his hgtip.com site.

In addition to the Mercurial Book and the Hg Init tutorial, I'll like to mention the example-driven guide I've written:

It shows how to get started with Mercurial and also covers some more advanced concepts such as named branches and hgsubversion. I've used it when teaching Mercurial to new users and they seemed to like it.

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