Mercurial tutorial. This article describes the distributed version control system Mercurial.
1. Overview
1.1. Distributed Version control system
With a distributed version control system you basically do not have a central code repository but everyone has its own branch. To can clone a branch and you always get the full history of the whole branch on your system. You commit into your own branch and you can push your changes to other repositories and other people can pull from you.
The main advantages of distributed version control systems are
-
Speed: As the whole repository is offline available you can much faster search and compare
-
Commits: Everyone can commit to his own branch
Another popular distributed version control systems is Git.
1.2. Mercurial
Mercurial is a distributed version control system. Mercurial is used by Oracle for the OpenJDK development and offered as a option by Google in Google hosting.
Mercurial is written in Python. Mercurial has a command-line interface. Eclipse provides also a plug-in to use Mercurial.
2. Installation
2.1. Installation on Ubuntu
Install Mercurial on Ubuntu via:
sudo apt-get install mercurialThe installation of Mercurial for other platforms is described in Mercurial installation.
2.2. Installation on Windows
You find binary packages for Mercurial on Window on Binary packages for Windows.
3. Mercurial usage with the command line
3.1. Overview
The following will demonstrate a short development cycle using the command line interface of Mercurial.
You will create a new Mercurial repository, create a new Java project and commit the changes to your Mercurial repository.
The command for using Mercurial on the command line is "hg".
3.2. Prepare
Check that you are using Mercurial version 1.3 or higher:
hg --versionCreate and switch to your desired work directory .
Initialize a new Mercurial repository with:
hg clone https://yourproject.googlecode.com/hg/ name_of_directory_for_the_clone| If you have an existing project you could clone, e.g. create a copy of, your repository via the following command. |
hg clone https://yourproject.googlecode.com/hg/ name_of_directory_for_the_cloneEclipse creates a lot of metadata with regards to the current status of the Eclipse workbench. Also Eclipse creates compiled version in the directory bin. This data should not be placed in the mercurial repository. Create the file ".hgignore" in the same directory as the hg project.
# switch to regexp syntax.
syntax: regexp
^\.metadata
^de.vogella.mercurial.firstproject/bin$3.3. Create Java Project
Start Eclipse and use the new directory as workspace. Create a new Java project "de.vogella.mercurial.firstproject". Create the following Java class.
package de.vogella.mercurial.firstproject;
public class Test {
/**
* @param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello Mercurial");
}
}3.4. Add Project to Mercurial and commit
Add the project to Mercurial.
hg commit -A -m 'Commit with automatic addremove'Commit.
hg commit -m "Create new project"If you have checked out the Mercurial project from another site you can push your changes to the repository.
hg pushCheck the history via:
hg log3.5. Making changes
Rename your Java class to "TestNewName" and create a new class "Test2".
package de.vogella.mercurial.firstproject;
public class Test2 {
/**
* @param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello Mercurial");
System.out.println("This is a new class");
}
}Add the new files to Mercurial.
hg commit -A -m 'Commit with automatic addremove'A rename in Java removes the old file. Mercurial will report these files as missing (hg status). You can use the following command to automatically add the new files and remove the deleted.
Add the new files to Mercurial.
hg addremoveYou can now commit. The -A flag in the commit command would also automatically add and remove new files.
hg add .3.6. See changes
To see the changes use the status command. diff we show the differences.
hg log
hg diff3.7. Revert
You can revert the changes via "hg revert".
hg revert de.vogella.mercurial.firstproject/src/de/vogella/mercurial/firstproject/Test.java4. Links and Literature
4.2. MercurialEclipse Resources
If you need more assistance we offer Online Training and Onsite training as well as consulting