5 ms·

Mercurial 3.5 Released

140 points by ngoldbaum 11y ago

LukeHoersten 11y ago
Some really exciting updates in here. It seems that while Git is popular for open source projects (thanks to GitHub), Mercurial is popular for internal repos and companies. That's personally how I use it.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  I'd still use Mercurial if I could but every library/framework I use on a regular basis lives in a git repo so I just stopped fighting the current and learnt enough git to keep my sanity.
  - philtar 11y ago
    hg-git and hg-github I just started using them yesterday. So far so good.
    - LukeHoersten 11y ago
      I've been using hg-git for years for almost all my git contributions. Works well.
- shadowmint 11y ago
  really? Like what? I'm looking through the change log and although its large, it also seems rather mundane. Are there new standout features beyond the new network protocol?
alblue 11y ago
People still use Mercurial?
- mrits 11y ago
  if we rewrote mercurial in clojurescript and renamed it to ninja-control everyone would be blown away by the feature list
- stephenr 11y ago
  People still somehow believe that a technology monoculture is ever a good thing?
ngoldbaum 11y ago
I've said this in the past on HN posts about mercurial but it bears repeating: if you had bad experiences with mercurial in the past, I strongly urge you to spin up one of the latest releases. Engineers at Google, Facebook, Mozilla, and Unity contribute regularly and mercurial has become more feature rich and substantially faster over the past few years. Mercurial does everything that git does (in fact, you can pull from or push to git repos with hg-git), has a UI that's easier to learn, and has online help that is terse and helpful. As far as killer features go, check out phases[1] and changeset evolution[2]. The latter is still at alpha level and the UI is unstable, but I use it for day-to-day work and find it incredibly useful. [1] https://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Phases https://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Phases [2] https://bitbucket.org/marmoute/mutable-history https://bitbucket.org/marmoute/mutable-history
- shuzchen 11y ago
  I'm also a big fan of hg revsets: https://www.selenic.com/hg/help/revsets https://www.selenic.com/hg/help/revsets Granted, it's not a commonly used feature by solo devs working on their own projects, but is useful for team repos that get large enough where you need to do audits on the codebase.
  - ngoldbaum 11y ago
    Agreed, revsets are another amazingly useful feature. Also check out templates[1], which let you customize pretty much everything about hg's output. [1] http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/customising-mercurial-like-a-pro/ http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/customising-mercurial-l...
  - emn13 11y ago
    Even though I use git day-to-day, I keep around an hg-git clone specifically for revsets. What's the point of a version control system if you can't actually find anything in the history?
    - leonardinius 11y ago
      Thanks for the tip. I never thought of this particular use case. Will give it try.
pnathan 11y ago
Always lovely seeing Mercurial work. It really is the elegant tool for source control.
jordigh 11y ago
I'm very excited about this release. I would like to promote my own small and insignificant contribution to it. I made a few improvements to the template engine to make it easier to write your own templates. An example is the new built-in `hg log --template=status` or `hg log -T status` for short. For each commit it displays file additions, removals, and modifications using the same style as `hg status`. Copies are displayed if you pass the --copies/-C flag, just like `hg status` too. You can see this template in the map-cmdline.status file in the installed Mercurial templates directory: https://selenic.com/hg/file/tip/mercurial/templates/map-cmdline.status https://selenic.com/hg/file/tip/mercurial/templates/map-cmdl... I especially like this example because it exhibits Mercurial's extensibility and overall philosophy very well. Rather than cluttering the CLI with a bunch of extra obscure options (such as a hypothetical --status option), we provide a generic mechanism where more advanced users can hook their own customisations into. We do not complicate the UI for the uncommon case.
sergiotapia 11y ago
Every couple of months I get bummed out Mercurial lost the mindshare war years ago. I used Mercurial before Git and it was perfectly fine and easy to reason about. http://hginit.com/ http://hginit.com/ helped me start out, and it was amazing to be able to work on code without blocking other team members. I know Git now not because it's nice to use, but due to rote memorization and muscle memory.
- nailer 11y ago
  There's a lot of times when the alternative may be (if one could measure these things), '20% better' than the mainstream tech. The things is, they'd need to be '500% better' to offset the network effect of the mainstream tech.
stephenr 11y ago
Seems like the link for downloading OS X binaries is broken. If you tell me "just use Homebrew" I will berate you a LOT.
- stephenr 11y ago
  There is actually an issue filed for this bug. https://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website/issues/23/download-now-link-broken https://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website/issues/23/download-now...
  - ngoldbaum 11y ago
    You've got the wrong bug tracker: http://bz.selenic.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4769 http://bz.selenic.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4769
    - stephenr 11y ago
      I didn't file that bug I just found it. Thanks for the link to the other bug though.
anton_gogolev 11y ago
Mercurial truly rocks. Yes, Git seems to have won the mindshare of developers in the OSS world, but Mercurial is quite strong in a corporate environment. And for some reason HgLab [1] (of which I am the author of) seems to be quite popular in medical institutions. [1]: https://hglabhq.com https://hglabhq.com

140 points by ngoldbaum 11y ago

Some really exciting updates in here. It seems that while Git is popular for open source projects (thanks to GitHub), Mercurial is popular for internal repos and companies. That's personally how I use it.

noir_lord 11y ago
I'd still use Mercurial if I could but every library/framework I use on a regular basis lives in a git repo so I just stopped fighting the current and learnt enough git to keep my sanity.
- philtar 11y ago
  hg-git and hg-github I just started using them yesterday. So far so good.
  - LukeHoersten 11y ago
    I've been using hg-git for years for almost all my git contributions. Works well.
shadowmint 11y ago
really? Like what? I'm looking through the change log and although its large, it also seems rather mundane. Are there new standout features beyond the new network protocol?

alblue 11y ago

People still use Mercurial?

mrits 11y ago
if we rewrote mercurial in clojurescript and renamed it to ninja-control everyone would be blown away by the feature list
stephenr 11y ago
People still somehow believe that a technology monoculture is ever a good thing?

ngoldbaum 11y ago

I've said this in the past on HN posts about mercurial but it bears repeating: if you had bad experiences with mercurial in the past, I strongly urge you to spin up one of the latest releases. Engineers at Google, Facebook, Mozilla, and Unity contribute regularly and mercurial has become more feature rich and substantially faster over the past few years. Mercurial does everything that git does (in fact, you can pull from or push to git repos with hg-git), has a UI that's easier to learn, and has online help that is terse and helpful. As far as killer features go, check out phases[1] and changeset evolution[2]. The latter is still at alpha level and the UI is unstable, but I use it for day-to-day work and find it incredibly useful. [1] https://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Phases https://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Phases [2] https://bitbucket.org/marmoute/mutable-history https://bitbucket.org/marmoute/mutable-history

shuzchen 11y ago
I'm also a big fan of hg revsets: https://www.selenic.com/hg/help/revsets https://www.selenic.com/hg/help/revsets Granted, it's not a commonly used feature by solo devs working on their own projects, but is useful for team repos that get large enough where you need to do audits on the codebase.
- ngoldbaum 11y ago
  Agreed, revsets are another amazingly useful feature. Also check out templates[1], which let you customize pretty much everything about hg's output. [1] http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/customising-mercurial-like-a-pro/ http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/customising-mercurial-l...
- emn13 11y ago
  Even though I use git day-to-day, I keep around an hg-git clone specifically for revsets. What's the point of a version control system if you can't actually find anything in the history?
  - leonardinius 11y ago
    Thanks for the tip. I never thought of this particular use case. Will give it try.

pnathan 11y ago

Always lovely seeing Mercurial work. It really is the elegant tool for source control.

jordigh 11y ago

I'm very excited about this release. I would like to promote my own small and insignificant contribution to it. I made a few improvements to the template engine to make it easier to write your own templates. An example is the new built-in `hg log --template=status` or `hg log -T status` for short. For each commit it displays file additions, removals, and modifications using the same style as `hg status`. Copies are displayed if you pass the --copies/-C flag, just like `hg status` too. You can see this template in the map-cmdline.status file in the installed Mercurial templates directory: https://selenic.com/hg/file/tip/mercurial/templates/map-cmdline.status https://selenic.com/hg/file/tip/mercurial/templates/map-cmdl... I especially like this example because it exhibits Mercurial's extensibility and overall philosophy very well. Rather than cluttering the CLI with a bunch of extra obscure options (such as a hypothetical --status option), we provide a generic mechanism where more advanced users can hook their own customisations into. We do not complicate the UI for the uncommon case.

sergiotapia 11y ago

Every couple of months I get bummed out Mercurial lost the mindshare war years ago. I used Mercurial before Git and it was perfectly fine and easy to reason about. http://hginit.com/ http://hginit.com/ helped me start out, and it was amazing to be able to work on code without blocking other team members. I know Git now not because it's nice to use, but due to rote memorization and muscle memory.

nailer 11y ago
There's a lot of times when the alternative may be (if one could measure these things), '20% better' than the mainstream tech. The things is, they'd need to be '500% better' to offset the network effect of the mainstream tech.

stephenr 11y ago

Seems like the link for downloading OS X binaries is broken. If you tell me "just use Homebrew" I will berate you a LOT.

stephenr 11y ago
There is actually an issue filed for this bug. https://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website/issues/23/download-now-link-broken https://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website/issues/23/download-now...
- ngoldbaum 11y ago
  You've got the wrong bug tracker: http://bz.selenic.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4769 http://bz.selenic.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4769
  - stephenr 11y ago
    I didn't file that bug I just found it. Thanks for the link to the other bug though.

anton_gogolev 11y ago

Mercurial truly rocks. Yes, Git seems to have won the mindshare of developers in the OSS world, but Mercurial is quite strong in a corporate environment. And for some reason HgLab [1] (of which I am the author of) seems to be quite popular in medical institutions. [1]: https://hglabhq.com https://hglabhq.com