I'm coming from a TortoiseSVN background and decided to give TortoiseHg a try. One thing I got really used to with TortoiseSVN was the SVN Repo-Explorer, which worked quite similarly to Windows Explorer. However, when I tried to use TortoiseHg's Repository Explorer, what I got was something else, it was more like TortoiseSVN's Show Log. It showed me what the recent commits were and what files were changed and even had nifty graphs. However, I'm still left wanting for TortoiseSVN's Repo-Explorer.
Does TortoiseHg have anything like this? How am I supposed to poke around the Repository if I can only view changed stuff?
I might be wrong as I have little experience with Hg myself, but I believe the reason TortoiseHg doesn't have a repository like its SVN counterpart is because Hg is a distributed VCS instead of a centralized VCS like SVN. So, the actual repository is your "checked out" copy. When you commit, you commit to your local repository, then you can push changes to other people or locations (such as google code, or your team mates). There are actually multiple different repositories for a project located in many places, instead of a single one, so there isn't really any meaning to "exploring the repository". The best you can do is check for incoming change-sets and view your local repository (using windows explorer).
This is mostly my reasoning based off a little experience with both. I might be wrong, but I hope this sounds reasonable.
This article might help clear it up: Distributed revision control. It took me some time to wrap my head around the idea of a distributed VCS too. In a nutshell, it's kinda like emailing your changes to your team mates. Everyone has their own individual repository, and each updates their own repository by getting change-sets from others.
Related
I will start by saying this is probably a dumb question so apologies if I am staring at the answer but cannot see.
I have used VCS in the past primarily as a method of allowing me to revert my code if something goes wrong. I have always had a single lime of development. However I get into the usual trouble when releasing and starting the next version - dealing with bugs. So this time I decided to use branching (forking or whatever is the best name). I am a lone developer so I am the only one working with the repositiory. My scenerio is simple. I want to create a branch when I release so that I have a line for the released code and a line for the beta. I can then work happily on the beta. Now a bug comes in and I need to get back to the last commit for the release.
My question is what is the best way to get back that code in the IDE to work on it.
I have read that in Mercurial a simple way is to clone the repository including the working directory. This would give me two copies of the code base and I guess I can choose which one to load into the IDE. I would then use Push or pull to get the bug fixes from the release copy into the beta copy (I think).
I assume there must be another way however without cloning. How would I do that? I can guess at reverting to the last commit of the release code. Then I assume that loading the solution into the IDE would give me that. I am not sure where I would go from there when the code is done.
For the record I looked at a number of different VCS - I have used SVN in the past but wanted to go to a DVCS. I looked at Git, Bazaar, Mercurial and Veracity (and used Code-Coop in the past). You may think another tool would suit my needs better. Having tried the others however I found I could understand the way Mercurial works and the GUI tools such as TortoiseHg with the WorkBench and HgSccPackage (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/9bc074fa-9e1f-4ce2-a75d-b90e65f7475a) appeal
There are a lot of good documents and links here Introduction to Mercurial and I have read about different ways to branch that include using bookmarks and so on but they seem primarily targeted at multi member teams - which make sense of course
Many thanks in advance
You are mixing concepts a little, i guess you have SVN background ?
Just to answer you question, to 'get back the code in IDE' you will need to 'update' to a previous version. But this is considering you already have cloned the repository. Is your question about how to clone.. ? As you ask, there is no other way without cloning first. Cloning is the first step towards having a HG repository local. After clone, you can commit and push changes or pull and update.
To expand the answer even further and given that you are going to use Mercurial, here is what you should do:
read this : http://hginit.com/ - great HG (tutorial) by Joel Spolsky him self ! An introduction into HG and the concepts. You will need to understand this very good, since right now you are doing a lot of guessing, assuming and thinking :) HG/Git is different from SVN and in the begging the concepts might be hard to understand and to get used to.
for your project and regarding your question, have a branch called 'dev' or 'trunk' or 'version X' etc where you will commit all new changes.
have a branch called 'live' etc that will represent the current 'live' version. This way, whenever you need to revert back in time to the live version and to do a quick fix on it, you will 'update' to the tip of that 'live' branch, discarding all local changes (after you have committed to trunk! of course).
when putting a version to live, you will need to (assuming all changes are committed !) : update to the live branch then MERGE the version X into local (local being live ). This will include your versionX branch into live - it's what you need at this point. Then, either update back to version X branch or create a new branch - version X+1. This will take care of the versions and keeping the branches separate.
since you are using VS - install http://visualhg.codeplex.com/. HG source control integrated into VS.
I assume there must be another way however without cloning
Yes. You can use (named) branches inside single repo (I prefer HgSccPackage in VS), update to revisionbranch head, change, commit, merge
BTW, branching with bookmarks/clones/branches work the same (good) way for any size of team - it's a matter of taste
First, a confession. In about 10 years of professional development, I've never used a source control system. There, that feels better. My historical setup (as recommended by management, ha!) has been to create dated folders on a server and copy-and-paste my data into it each evening.
I've known for a long time that a much better, manageable solution would be to use git or Mercurial to manage my source but I've never taken the time to learn any of these new tools because myold system has always worked well enough for my needs as the lone developer for every project I've ever worked on.
I have finally change this setup. I've installed Mercurial on my Mac, which after a bit of reading, I prefer over git. As a GUI front-end, I have installed SourceTree which appears to be easy to use and quite friendly. The problem I am having is that I can't find a very simple, straight-forward walkthrough for setting up a server repository that I use for pushing changes to each evening. I'm sure it's there, I just can't find it.
I've honestly tried to Google this, but there is something about the term "SourceTree". I can't find anything useful because half of the information I find is in regards to using git and it tends to involve pushing a project to a site like github.com, which is not pertinent in my case.
Additionally, I have skimmed the Mercurial documentation and I still may not be entirely clear about the full commit/update/push/pull/branch/merge concept. I just want to get something setup rather fast that will back-up and track the changes of my projects, without having to be a source control guru.
How do I setup a simple repository on a Windows network server, and push and pull changes each evening? My company want me to store my data in a personal folder, on a network share that is backed up to tape and is then stored off site.
I'm sure it has to be simple. I just want to be sure that I'm doing it correctly so that in the case that I need to access a back up, it is there and can be easily pulled... or branched.. or whatever.
Well, it depends on the kind of the server you are going to use.
Let's assume it's not a Windows server (just a guess, as you're a Mac user). Let's also assume that right now you only need it for yourself, not for a bunch of users.
Then the simplest way is to use SSH. Suppose the server is server, and you have an account rlh there. You'll need to have a public/private key pair for a seamless access (no need to enter the password on each pull/push). You'll need to install Mercurial on the server as well, obviously.
On the server, create a repo (in your home dir, for example):
rlh#mac$ ssh server
rlh#server$ mkdir myproject
rlh#server$ cd myproject
rlh#server$ hg init
On your machine, clone the repo:
rlh#mac$ hg clone ssh://rlh#server/myproject myproject
The default target will be set automatically, and you should be able to pull/push with no additional configuration.
Feel free to ask if you have a question regarding this.
When searching for hosting solutions, best not to include the term SourceTree in your query — SourceTree is just a front-end tool that is in principle unrelated to Mercurial hosting. That might explain the lack of useful information.
Here is an overview of ways to set up Mercurial servers:
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/PublishingRepositories
Personally I’m using plain hgweb and that has served me well.
Also I would recommend to consider using a hosting service such as BitBucket or Google Code. It requires much less effort to set up and maintain. Here is an overview of Mercurial hosting services:
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/MercurialHosting
Personally I’m also considering moving my self-hosted Mercurial repositories over to BitBucket, because of reduced maintenance overhead, and also it has functionality like bug tracker, wiki etc.
I'm doing a single developer Visual Studio solution and reached a point where I'd like to incorporate Versioning Control. Several posts address this issue, but one problem I'm facing is a large merge. I have a production copy of the solution and a beta copy. They are NOT dramatically different, but they will require a number of interactions I suspect. I'm using TortoiseSVN and have imported the production version.
Yes, I know I should have used Version Control from the start, but that is hind sight. Would it be best practice to simply use the beta as a reference and work the interations from scratch. Or should I branch off and import the beta separately, then attempt to merge the change. Or is there another alternative I'm missing.
Thanks,
dgp
well, I have experienced SVN in the past ... and I must say, it's lovely cause it's really easy to understand the concept, but it's awful terrible when things pass from the plain commit.
I'm currently using GIT (to host small code on GitHub) and Mercurial (Hg) (I use Kiln in the company - was recommended by myself so they can start using - and in BitBucket for personal use)
I have used SVN for more than a hole year and every time I need something from "the past" or to merge something, it was a nightmare, but the server/client concept was really a break deal and extremely easy to get it... but I found my self, over and over to do merging by hand :(
When GIT started to be hot, I was afraid to move as, dang! SVN was a pain, why should be different in a DVCS?
This videos rocked my world, [ part 1 part 2 ], only then I understood DVCS vs VCS and it was with this that I moved COMPLETELY to DVCS and never go back... proudly!
For your problem, I would install git (or hg), and then create a repository on the folder you have your current source with:
git init will tell your folder, "Hey, I'm a GIT Repo"
git add . let's add all files and folders to be tracked by git
git commit -m "initial commit" let's save all the hard work :)
So, now you have a tracked code, you can simple create a branch and overwrite all your files. YES, worry not, you don't need to have copies of your code in a folder called branch ;) no more copies! all is in the GIT database
then, after creating the branch, changed the files, added all files to be tracked on that branch and committed, safely do a merge :)
ohh, and you don't need a server connection to do all this, all you need is a computer with GIT installed... no more connection dependencies! DVCS is cool or what?! :D
I started using Mercurial and chose MacHg as my GUI of choice, simply because it was the first thing I found when I googled Mercurial Mac GUI. However, I just recently discovered Murky, and TortoiseHg was recently updated for the Mac. Are there any significant reasons I should choose one over the other, or is the decision simply which application's interface I like the best?
I am the author of MacHg so of course am biased. Re Murky, it hasn't been kept up to date and it will fall over with large scale repositories when viewing history. It has to parse the whole history graph to lay it out (it uses the top level 'hg log'). Through a neat trick MacHg does this incrementally so if you have 200,000 commits MacHg doesn't need to read them all to figure out how to display them it can jump right to the place you are viewing. TortiseHg also suffers from having to read and parse the whole history although it can do this much faster than Murky (since TortiseHg uses faster lower level calls to get the data) (as reported to me by others.)
SourceTree seems like an ok solution. It is supported now commercially by Atlassian who do Bitbucket and they are a nice bunch of guys. However, as of my last test of SourceTree(1.4.3.1) it appears to be limited by the same problems. For instance one test case I use is the OpenOffice mercurial repository which is some 3Gigs with 260,000 revisions. Trying to view the graph for say revision 150,000 is really really slow in these other programs. I quit SourceTree after 5 minutes of waiting.
Also MacHg has some nicer history and rebasing tools if I do say so myself. SourceTree right now has better integration with some of the external services like Bitbucket and GitHub although it is not difficult at all to add repositories in MacHg (simple drag and drop or open, or paste in a string, etc...) Neither MacHg or SourceTree (AFAIK) have support for phases yet but I plan to add these very shortly as I am sure SourceTree will as well. TortiseHg has support for phases I think right now.
And well, I like "look and feel" of MacHg of course :)
You can't go too wrong with MacHg, or TortiseHg, or SourceTree unless you have large repositories in which case I would opt for MacHg for now.
Cheers,
Jason
This question is sort of subjective, but I've found SourceTree to be a good solution for visualizing your working copy. However, for the most part, I just use the terminal to commit/push/pull/update.
MacHg has at least straight forward instalation and Mercurial is integrated inside, what i missing is info, and there is also commandline interface, only documentation is not good enough.
I was in mac-mercurial / python / keyring configuring hell circle, i just new to setup repository for pulls without password asking (where pass is encrypted) from sh script for my build server. MacHg could be the way out, because everything is already integrated in instalation package, except mhg and chg aliases for normal (no MacHG) terminal.
I also missing some info about repository cloning progress, because i cloning 500 MB repository from bitbucket through https take me usually 2 hours. I need to debug if is problem on mercurial, ISP (it should be done in 2 minutes in regard of my connection speed) or bitbucket side.
Intro
I've used SVN before, back when I was working as a solo programmer, just to keep an offsite record of what I was doing, so I kind of know about ideas like "repositories" and "commits" and the like, though not much more than that. "Branches", "merges" and "checking out" are, sadly, a mystery to me.
I want to start using Git because we've got a couple of guys who work away from the office and they have complained that they sometimes can't get through to some other version control systems because their IDE integration causes them to sulk and fall over when they get out of contact. Git's idea of "Every working directory is a repository" seems like it should go some way towards solving that.
Anyway, I've downloaded the "Git Extensions" to add The Shiny to the Windows context menus, etc. and I've found that I really have no concept of how I'm supposed to use this to control my versioning. Not finding anything obvious after a google search, I present the following theoretical scenario to Stack Overflow in the hopes that someone will tell me what to do, in small words:
Scenario
I have three projects. One project, ProjectReuse is used by the two other projects (ProjectA and ProjectB). Various people in the organisation will need to edit the code for each project, using Visual Studio 2010.
I have three folders on my desktop, labelled "ProjectReuse", "ProjectA" and "ProjectB". I've got the Git Extenstions window open. A cow, wearing a Santa Claus hat, is staring at me.
Questions
What do I do now to create the repositories in such a way that several people (including those pesky not-always-on-site guys) can access a repository when they need to, on-site or off, with or without a permanent connection to our servers?
When the first guy needs to edit a file, what does he need to do? Check out? Branch? I have to explain this to the other team members and I'm a bit wobbly on these concepts, myself. I've only used version control for my solo projects before.
Wheedling and excuses
The first "how do I set this up?" question is what I'm most interested in, but I figure if I'm going to ask for the idiot's guide, I might as well ask for it to be as useful as possible for the next idiot who stumbles onto this question. I'm not looking for particularly in-depth answers, here; I just haven't got any clear picture in my mind of how a multi-user version control system works. Once I've got that in mind I should be able to put the rest together by myself.
Ok, let's get the first thing about git straight. Git is distributed. Repeat this to yourself as many times as necessary: there is no central server, central repository or indeed anything central. Completely in contrast to SVN, you are not all accessing one repository (nothing central).
What you do is create a repository somewhere. Then everybody else clones (copies) it. Now everyone has their own copy of the repository and can do with it as they wish. Branch names don't even need to be consistent across repositories although many people do this as it helps.
So, how do you set it up? You init a repository then everyone who wants it clones it. In your case, I'd recommend each project have its own git repository rather than lumping all three together.
But but but how on earth am I supposed to manage a development team, I hear you say? Never fear. I said there was no central repository, but that doesn't stop you designating one of the repositories to be the release repository, and another to be the experimental or whatever.
What you need then is a workflow. Typically, what you do is create said release repository and then say: "everybody pull from the master on here". This represents your latest "stable" release. Now you tell everyone to branch from here and develop their new features. They do this. As these get done, you ask people to merge their changes back into their own master or wherever, then you, the release manager, pull from them (probably into a development branch but you could well do it into your release master because it is trivial to reverse commits). The next person then updates their master and does their merge. They resolve their own merge conflicts etc, and so on until you have all the features you want. You do your testing etc then the release repository really does pull all of that into its master.
In practice you might do many different things. For example, if you have a lot of people you're going to need quite a lot of communication going on, because if lots of people make incompatible changes to your shared project there's going to be a few merge commits. To avoid this, users can pull/merge from each other or use a local "shared" repository.
It does work.
As said by Ninefingers, just init a new repository and let others clone it. Keep in mind that when you want a public (or central) repository, create a shared repository and not a private repository. The easiest way is to create a personal repository first, and than clone it to a place (e.g. network share) where everyone has access to as a shared repository.
I created a few video tutorials for Git Extensions here:
http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/
The video tutorials are a bit old and not very good since I do not have a mic or any video editing skills, but it should be enough to get you started.
Good luck!