Elvenware Mercurial Repository

Mercurial is one of many different tools used for version control. Like GIT, it supports a distributed architecture that allows you to have multiple versions of your repository. I use Mercurial rather than GIT because I think it is somewhat easier to use, however, if you are looking for a version control system, you should consider both Mercurial and the very popular GIT.

Mercurial is also referred to as HG, where HG is the symbol for Mercury. Mercurial is a command line utility and TortoiseHg is the most popular GUI client for this tool. The forehead install for TortoiseHg also automatically install Mercurial.

Index

Here is the address to pass to Mercurial if you want to pull down some of the source found on this site. Please see the sections below for more details:

hg clone http://elvenware.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/elvenware/andelf

The working part of the command is shown here:

http://elvenware.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/elvenware/andelf

Note that if you browse directly to this URL on the web, you can get an overview of the repository and see some of the most recent events that have occurred, such as updates. You can also use this URL to pull content from the repository, either by using the command line driven program called hg, or by using a Mercurial GUI based front end such as Tortoisehg. The rest of this document is primarily an explanation of how to use both of these tools.

TortoiseHg

Mercurial is a command line utility. You access it by typing hg. Most developers, however, use some kind of mouse driven, GUI based, front end that sits on top of Mercurial. The most commonly used front end is called TortoiseHg, which is available on Linux and Windows. This section of the text describes how to install TortoiseHg and configure it to pull down the Elvenware repository.

  • First download and install TortoiseHg.
  • Bring up the TortoiseHg workbench.
  • Choose **File Clone Repository** from the workbench menu.
  • In the Source field place the andelf URL shown in the previous section of this document.
  • In the Destination field, place the path to the location on the hard drive where you want to store your readonly copy of the repository.
  • Select the Clone button.

Cloning a Repository in Mercurial TortoiseHg

Figure 01: Cloning a Repository in Mercurial TortoiseHg. Click to englarge

Sometimes, after you have pulled down code from the repository, you may get message saying that you don’t have the head. In those cases, you will often see two paths in the main window. You should then right click on the diverged node, and choose update. Finally, choose Commit from the toolbar. (Commit is the check mark seen in the toolbar in Figure 2, the fourth icon from the right,

Not a head, and the small fork in the path

Figure 02: Not a head revision, and the small fork in the graph column. Click to zoom.

After the update and commit, there is no fork in the graph column, and the red "not a head revision" is gone.

Figure 03: After the update and commit, there is no fork in the graph column, and the red “not a head revision” is gone.

Note: If you pull down code from a Mercurial repository, and you want to use that code as the basis for one of your own projects, you would normally want to copy that code to another folder before using it. Otherwise, your work might be overwritten the next time you pull from the repository.

Mercurial in Eclipse

To configure Mercurial, choose Window | Preferences | Team | Mercurial

 

 

Install Mercurial on Linux

sudo apt-get install mercurial tortoisehg

Apparently meld is some kind of Linux GUI based front end for mercurial. I haven’t tried it yet. And perhaps I never will, as I see that tortoisehg is available.

Running Mercurial from the Command Line

TortoiseHg is a GUI front end to Mercurial. The actual Mercurial program is called hg,and it is driven from the command line. Mercuial works exactly the same in Windows, Linux and the Mac. Many users of Mercurial prefer the command line tools because they can put them in scripts that can be automated. For instance, in Windows, you could use the Task Scheduler to pull the latest updates from the repository each morning.

If you want to use hgrather than TortoiseHg, be prepared to do all your work from the command line. It is not hard, but you need to accept the task before you.

Here is how to get the Elvenware Repository for the first time with the clone command:

hg clone http://elvenware.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/elvenware/andelf

Once you have cloned the repository, you can update it with the latest content at any time. All you need to do is switch to the directory where your repository is stored, and then type the following commands:

hg pull
hg update

If you are writing a script, you probably won’t want to run the script from inside the repository. As a result, you need to write something like this, where g:\shanti\andelfis the path to your repository:

hg --repository g:\shanti\andelf\ pull --verbose http://elvenware.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/elvenware/andelf

If you have trouble figuring out what to do with Mercurial at the command line in Linux, you can learn what to do by using workbench in Windows; just make sure that the output log (Ctrl-L) is open at the bottom of the workbench. As you issue commands using the WorkBench interface, you can see the underlying hg command line equivalents in the output log at the bottom of the workbench. Now just copy those commands over to your Linux terminal.

Here is a review of how to run Mercurial on a Unix based operating system like Linux or the Mac. Call hg clone first. Many people will want to clone the repository in their
home or documents folder. In the examples that follow, I created the clone in my tmp directory just so I could easily delete it later, since I already have a copy in my home
folder, but want to show you the whole process from beginning to end.

The whole run should look like this, assuming that you start in a directory called /tmp:

charlie@MintBox /tmp $ hg clone http://elvenware.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/elvenware/andelf
destination directory: andelf
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 117 changesets with 504 changes to 440 files
updating to branch default
412 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
charlie@MintBox /tmp $

Now the repository is in/tmp/andelf
Here is what to do if you want to update your version of the repostiroy:

charlie@MintBox /tmp $ cd /tmp/andelf/
charlie@MintBox /tmp/andelf $ hg pull

If there were an updates, you will be prompted to run hg update. You should, of course, then run hg update:

charlie@MintBox /tmp/andelf $ hg pull
pulling from http://elvenware.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/elvenware/andelf
searching for changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 1 changesets with 1 changes to 1 files
(run 'hg update' to get a working copy)
charlie@MintBox /tmp/andelf $ hg update
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
charlie@MintBox /tmp/andelf $

Setting up a Mercurial Repository in Linux and Pulling it from Linux

To create the repository:

hg init MyRepo

Now navigate to your MyRepo directory:

cd /home/charlie/MyRepo

Use an editor or the echo command to put a file in it:

echo Test Content > MyFile.txt

The echo command, when used this way, creates a small text file with the words “Test Content” in it. Now add the file to the repository:

hg -add MyFile.txt

Now commit the file:

hg -commit

At this stage, if you are adding a file for the first time, you might get an error about user names. To get user name installed

Create hgrc in .hg and put this in it, where the user name is some email address that you want to use:

[ui]
username = MyName@MyServer

To pull it from the server you should copy the public key from your client machine to the authorized key file on the server that hosts the repository. Now you need to make sure your private key is loaded into memory. (This is the same thing as loading the key into Pageant.):

ssh-add YourPrivateKey

For instance, you might write: ssh-add .ssh/id_rsa. Or possibly ssh-add .ssh/id_charlie_rsa.pem. Your milage will vary depending on the name and location of the private key that you want to use.

Now you should be able to pull the repo from the client by issuing this command:

hg clone --verbose charlie@MyServer//home/charlie/MyRepo /home/charlie/MyRepo

We give this command on the client, and it sends messages to the server asking to retrieve the repository.

Let’s break the command down. First we say that we want to clone a repostory: hg clone. Then we say we want verbose output, so we get as much feedback as possible: hg clone –verbose.

We are saying that we will clone the repository that is stored on MyServer. The user on MyServer is charlie. Hence we write charlie@MyServer.

 The repository is stored in /home/charlie/MyRepo. Note that in the command there are the two slashes before the word home!!

Then we state where we want to put the repository on the client machine: /home/charlie/MyRepo. We are copying from the /home/charlie/MyRepo directory on the server to the /home/charlie/MyRepo directory on the client.  

Now you can edit one of the files on the client. While still in the directory where you did your work, you can update the server. To update the server, you perform a commit and push. First the commit:

hg commit

When giving the commit command for the first time, you may be prompted to specify an editor. On Linux, choose nano, unless you know you prefer vim or some other tool such as gedit. On Windows, choose NotePad++ or Notepad.

Now the push. Again, when you give this command, you should be in the directory where you are doing your work. For instance, you should be in /home/charlie/MyRepo. Here is the command:

hg push

Then on the server, you can see the results by typing the following:

hg update

Of course, that command merely updates your file. To see the contents of the file, type something like this:

cat MyFile.txt

SVN

You can install and download SVN without cost./span>

SVN Downloads: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Create a directory on your hard drive, then right click and choose SVN Checkout.

SVN Checkout

SVN Import New Code

Figure 0X: SVN Checkout

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