[geeklog-devel] Mercurial, first impressions

[Dirk Haun]

On the topic of using a DVCS for the SoC (and possibly later, as a
replacement for CVS): I've started playing around with Mercurial.

I converted a copy of the 1.5.0rc2 CVS repository to a Mercurial
repository, which was painless (apart from getting to install a few Ruby
extensions that the converter needed). Mercurial (and DVCS in general)
really has some nice ideas built in:

- The repository and working copy are all in one directory and its all
selfcontained. So you can move it around, check things in without an
internet connection, create more clones from your local copy. Then,
later, push your changes back to the main repository (if there is such a
thing - doesn't have to).

- Mercurial at least has a webserver built in. Run "hg serve" and you
have a simple equivalent of the CVS viewer we're using.

- As with the webserver, you can easily and temporarily share your
repository. Just tell someone how the get to your repository and they
can clone it. Works via http and ssh.

- Pushing changes back requires an account and ssh.

I think this would work really well for the SoC. A mentor could pull the
changes directly from a student. Students can show off what they have at
any time: Hop on IRC, give temp. URL of repository, let mentor or
someone else pull things from there.

Note that I haven't really done too much real work with it yet. I did
the conversion yesterday, pulled a copy from my machine at home to the
one at work today, made a change there and pushed it back. This only
involved http and ssh connections and worked through a firewall. No
fancy running of a daemon on some port.

Still need to wrap my head around some of the concepts, but so far I'm
impressed.

I'll keep you posted ...

bye, Dirk


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