I have just begun working on a project which uses Mercurial as a version control system, and I need some basic tips on how to use this. Please use this question to give some introductory tips on this technology.
The official Mercurial site
Especially, I am looking for tips on the best programs to use and the best techniques to use (branches, in and out-checking etc. I need to learn the best-practices!)
I know you already have the Mercurial site but the resource most useful to me was the Mercurial book. It's an excellent overview of the program and how to use it.
I found the best way to learn Mercurial was just to use it on a project. I imported into Mercurial a project I had exported from subversion and did some regular development with it. I made sure to clone the repository for different changesets so that I could get used to the merging and updating. I haven't learned all of the advanced uses but I'm now on a pretty firm footing with it and haven't switched back to Subversion yet.
A lot of projects have different techniques for commit workflow. Some have changes pushed from the developers, like centralized systems, and some will pull the changes from contributors (Linux, for example). It's hard to generalize too much without knowing the process for your project.
This is how I do my development:
Centralized tree on a file share or http, called project-trunk or project that is the definitive project version
A clean tree on my system that I clone from the remote repository and use to push back to the repository. I then clone from this tree for my changes. I call this tree project-local
Clone the project-local tree for each of my changes: eg. project-addusers, project-141, etc.
After I am finished with the commits to a tree, I then push the changes to the project-local repository
Finally, push the changes in the project-local to project-trunk
I have the clean project-local tree because then I can push all the changesets back to the trunk at one time, which is helpful if there is a group of related changes that need to push back together.
As for tools, it depends on your platform. I just use the vanilla command line tool. Coming from TortoiseSVN, it was a bit of a change to go to the command line. But I'm fine with it now. I tried using TortoiseHg but it didn't function well on my Windows 7 x64 virtual machine. I hear it's much better on the supported 32-bit platforms.
Here is a helpful tutorial on Mercurial written by Joel Spolsky.
It covers basic usage and commands, as well as how to work with Mercurial at a more conceptual level. If you are already familiar with SVN, then the first part is definitely worth reading: it talks about the major conceptual differences between SVN and Mercurial, because trying to use Mercurial in the same way that you use SVN is asking for trouble.
Have a look at the Mercurial book, or at this Mercurial tutorial.
Depending on your background with other source control tools, I would also suggest a specific SCM-whatever to Mercurial guide. For example, have a look at this guide for Subversion users.
Another good resource for getting your head around the whole "distributed" source control idea is: http://betterexplained.com/articles/intro-to-distributed-version-control-illustrated/ ... with helpful diagrams!
If you use the latest TortoiseHG client and include the install directory in your PATH environment, you will be able to use both the nice GUI they provide, and the command line 'hg'
I cannot recommend using the mq extensions too much. They make for a great 'working repository' environment.
I use the queues to manage local changes against a subversion repository. I do my local short term changes and use mercurial to keep in sync with subversion and the rest of the team.
A few of Steve Losh's blog posts are good, even though they're a couple of year old now. They mainly deal with how to work with branching.
Guide to Branching in Mercurial
Branch Workflows - Branching as needed
Branch Workflows - Stable and Default
It's also worth looking at his hgtip.com site.
In addition to the Mercurial Book and the Hg Init tutorial, I'll like to mention the example-driven guide I've written:
Mercurial Kick Start
It shows how to get started with Mercurial and also covers some more advanced concepts such as named branches and hgsubversion. I've used it when teaching Mercurial to new users and they seemed to like it.
Related
I have been searching both google and other SO questions but none really describe my situation.
I often create a copy of a project when I have a major feature working, so that I don't destroy it when I keep coding. Currently I am just copying the project in eclipse and renaming it to something like "MyProject2.0". This leaves my workspace VERY cluttered though.
Those are not huge upgrades, for normal versioning this is x.0.z, x.1.z, x.2.z at best. Should I just use Git or something similar? I am looking for a way to keep the old code(easily at hand) but also not clutter up my workspace like this.
Yes, you definitely should. Use Subversion, Git, Mercurial, CVS ... whatever you feel fine working with. Even for solo projects version control software is a huge help in my experience.
Any version control system will help. I've used rcs, cvs, svn and git along the way, any of them will do the trick for you. Choosing a revision control system, especially if you are a soloist is personal choice. You may want to consider git, as it is quite a good tool for what you are describing. GIT is well described on the git site with practical examples. Using it will surely get rid of your clutter. You should specifically read up on the git workflow that describes how to work with branches in a git controlled project. Also look at "stashing" in git, you'll see what I mean about git being nice for solo projects.
we will be doing a project for our Object Oriented Software Eng. class, and our team consists 4 people, including myself. Our groups were made random, so I do not know their level of skills. Maybe they have never heard of version control. I am looking for a system that will allow us to work together. I have used SVN and Git for a very little time. However, I am not very confident with them. Can you suggest a nice and easy to use system that is compatible with Eclipse or NetBeans IDE? Simplicity is the most important thing and I do not know how to use Git or SVN for a project more than one people. (I have only used them individually)
You need to have some kind of Source control.
If you have used SVN/GIT in your own projects using it in a team is just as easy. SVN is easiest, however even though it is a little harder I would go for mercurial with tortoiseHG, hosted for free at bitbucket.
It will Integrate into the windows UI
Its distributed which will make things smoother and reduce merge issues
You get free private hosting
You can use tortoise SVN or VSS (Visual source safe) to maintain project among multiple peoples. In both tool, you can maintain local copy of project in your PC and commit your changes on server when it completes.
Version control tools comparision : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software
Have a look at Mercurial. It is easy to use and portable (it's written in Python). If you use Windows, you will probably find TortoiseHG useful too, as it provides Explorer extensions for mostly all functions Mercurial supports. There are also many sites that provide free project hosting for this VCS, such as BitBucket. And here is a nice tutorial about Mercurial.
EDIT: I once found a Mercurial plug-in for Eclipse. You can find it by searching in Help > Install Software in Eclipse.
I have used Dropbox as source control in a project once, it worked ok you can also revert to old version of your files which is great, we didn`t have to work in the same files so there was no conflict.
But now that I have gotten used to svn and mercurial I would never use something else. I too would recommend using mercurial with tortoiseHg and a bitbucket acount. I have started using it for smaller project as well, I simply did a repository with all of them in it so I have at least a backup and I am able to revert to an old version if need be.
My recommandation is to avoid sharing a folder using tools like dropbox and use a real source control like mercurial hosted on bitbucket (free for project with less than 4 users).
I'd say using SVN or GIT is a bit over kill for a school project which is likely to not last that long.
Another option would be to use something like DropBox.
Hi
I'm currently seeing a need for handling source code for a few projects I'm working on. I have no need for external hosting, but I do need to have a structure internal in my development environment.
So, how would you guys recommend to handle this? To you just place the files on a file share in your environment, or do you set up some kind of versioning systems? I'm quite new to this, but I would like to have some way of getting back to old versions of my code, I would like to have the source code centrally stored so I can reach if from bothmy laptop and workstation.
/Andy.l
Use a source control management system - I would suggest using a distributed one such as Git or Mercurial, so you don't need a server or need to be online to work.
You can still have a central location where you push and pull stuff from if you really want to.
If you must have a server, go with SVN - it is easy to setup and widely used.
With all of these options, there are hosted services that you can use as a central store.
If you are using windows OS, then Visual SVN is quite good. You can install it on the server and use a client like Tortoise SVN to connect to it from other machines. The basic version is free to use.
Definitely use a version control system, it will allow you to do some nice workflows on your coding day and have all securely stored. There are several good free vcs (git, mercurial, subversion, etc). For Some time I used a combination of git + dropbox or sugar sync to back up and share my repos
http://git-scm.com/
Do setup a source control repository. Using a SCM, has nothing but benefits.
With respect of what SCM system to chose, to very simple repositories to setup and learn are Mercurial (distributed), and Subversion (centralized). I know you said you wanted centralized access to your sources, but keep in mind that that doesn't meant you can't use Mercurial for that purpose.
Here's a great tutorial on Mercurial by Joel Spolsky.
Lots of choices based on environment, etc.
SVN is an excellent all-around choice for centralized source control. You can also use Mercurial and Git internally if you prefer DVCS (even in a local environment).
In any case, regardless of what version control system you have - get one. Even if it's just one developer doing personal projects, source control is a must.
There's no question that setting up a SCM makes sense and has only advantages. Which SCM to use depends on several circumstances:
Do your co-workers already know any SCM? We're using SVN and I think it would be quite hard to teach my colleagues the concepts of a DVCS like git
In my opinion, using a DVCS like git needs more discipline during work: you have to remember to push to the central repository.
But this is also an advantage: you can create your own development branches and work on them without publishing them to the rest of your colleagues (saves reputation in some cases :-))
If you or your co-workers often work from remote, using a DVCS is more comfortable than using a centralized one like SVN: you need no connection to your central repository but can still checkin, create branches and (quite important) view the complete history of your project without connecting (e.g. via VPN) to your servers at work.
For a centralized VCS, I can recommend SVN (setup as Hps supposed)
As DVCS I can recommend Git (msysgit with tortoisegit)
If you decide to use SVN, you can still use git-svn on the clients: the repository is being run with SVN, but anyhow, you get the advantages of a DVCS while being offline.
What kind of code (what coding languages) can I use GitHub for? Can I use it for websites? Flash? Can I upload images files and other resources?
(I am completely unfamiliar with Git and SVN.)
On git, svn and mercurial:
git, svn, Mercurial are all version control systems. svn was a great improvement over cvs, a commonly used version control system prior to emergence of new VCS. svn like cvs has a client-server model. git and mercurial provides a distributed version control system that does not depend on network as any repository is self contained with all the history and change records. Of course, there are other goodies.
Remember that version control system solves the problem of "the cat ate my code". You can use it to track any kind of development - code, text documents etc.
On github, bitbucket, code.google.com and codplex:
These provide additional goodies on top of what a version control system provides.
They provide you storage for keeping your repository, which you can access and share with the world.
When you share code, you would want to also provide documentation. They provide wiki support for this purpose.
They also provide ticketing / bug management system which can ease a development project.
In short, they provide various tools that can help in project management and development of your code.
Since you are getting to whet the knowledge in some of these areas, following links will be a very useful introductions:
a-visual-guide-to-version-control
intro-to-distributed-version-control-illustrated
You can use GitHub for any source code you want to manage.
But you actually can also use GitHub for your blog(!), the idea being that you would manage your articles and their revisions as you would for a source code base.
(Example: git-blog)
More general documentations: GitHub features (wiki, issue tracking, code review...).
Git does not restrict the kind of files you can track with it... use Github for anything your project needs to track!
Check out http://help.github.com/ for some documentation on how to get started using Git in conjunction with GitHub.
Version control can be applied to ANY file type. From text to images to Flash to whatever. Subversion is my Version control system of choice, and I host my own Subversion server.
As for Git. Well Git is just another version control system. Again, the same rules apply, you can version any file-type. Git-Hub is a public Git server that you can register for and use. You can make your repository public or private.
You cannot however host a site on git-hub. You can do rudimentary blogs, and use the git-feeds to feed your site, but you can't really use it as a traditional web site.
I am planning to bring some "peace" (you may call it organization) to the personal work (small projects, etc.) I do at home.
I would like to use a SCM and an issue tracker which can capture the commits and show them as changesets etc. automatically.
Note that all the above applications are supposed to be for personal usage so would prefer something from FOSS and also they need to be ultra lightweight in terms of the system requirements.
What do you recommend?
EDIT: Following are some of my doubts/concerns:
Git with GitHub looks good. But I am not very comfortable with making my code base public on GitHub. What do you say?
Does GitHub provide an issue tracker? I mean, can I open up an issue on GitHub provided issue tracker and commit against that issue?
Can I have a local SCM (on my laptop) and use some remote issue tracker like FogBugz? But I just don't understand how could a remote issue tracker capture my commits. Any idea?
UPDATE:
I finally went with Mercurial and BitBucket. Working awesome so far!
I would recommend Git with GitHub
I like and use Redmine with the basecamp theme. It supports a couple of version control systems like git, mercurial, svn, ...
For projects that I want to publish I use bitbucket.org and github.com.
I never tried, but would look into git in combination with ticgit ..
If you're going free personal, I'd recommend SVN and Trac. The two integrate very well together with a little bit of configuration. They're also both pretty lightweight.
If you're willing to spend a bit or are working on an open source project, I'd recommend Atlassian's tools Jira and FishEye. I've worked with them as well and have found integration to be very good. They can be a bit hefty though, and I've found the FishEye client to be very AJAX heavy to the point of performance issues.
If you can trust that you'll always be working on your personal projects near your source control server (or if you're doing it all on the same box) then I'd suggest Subversion. I feel the barrier for entry is lower for it than distributed tools like git or mercurial.
I'd look into VisualSVN for your server.
If you're running it all on one box, you can use TortoiseSVN's built-in Repo feature.
My favorite clients are TortoiseSVN and AnkhSVN (if you need VS integration.)
For an issue tracker, a simple story board might be better than a piece of software.
I use org-mode in emacs to track personal projects.
I've used various SCMs for personal work. For really small stuff I still sometimes just run ci -l somefile to start versioning with RCS, because I'm old-school that way. I've happily used Darcs for personal stuff, and I maintain that Darcs is still the easiest to use DVCS out there. These days if I think I'm going to be Open-Sourcing the project I'm likely to use Git, just because that makes putting it on GitHub straightforward.
I also like to use personal projects as an opportunity to experiment with other SCMs that I'm not familiar with, so I'll probably be versioning projects with Bazaar and Mercurial in the future.
In the past, I've used CVS for source control, but I've recently started converting most of my personal projects to use git. However, I don't like the way git works with Visual Studio, so I've been switching to Subversion for my C# projects.
For issue tracking, I've been using Redmine which supports all three SCM methods, though it does better with SVN and git.
Lightweight issue tracking, well, you could use the tracker in drupal, if you consider LAMP easy enough to set up.
If you want to be self-contained, git and mercurial are things you can use without setting up a server at all.
Of course, there's good-old-RCS.
I would have to second using the Subversion and Trac combination. I have this environment setup at work and use it for a distributed team of developers, and I have this environment setup at home and use it for my personal projects. They are open source, very adaptable to your workflow and Trac Hacks has pretty much any mod / hack / plugin you could think of in one form or another.
For very personal things (let's say single-user-mode) I use Tomboy (a simple note-taking application) and Getting Things Gnome. If the project becomes more complex, then I used to switch to Trac with svn or hg backend. For next projects, I'm going to try redmine: seems more clean and hipe than trac (:))