comparison en/ch01-tour-basic.xml @ 766:3b33dd6aba87

Merge with http://hg.serpentine.com/mercurial/book

765:d8c85d831fb4

    <title>Installing Mercurial on your system</title>

    <para id="x_1">Prebuilt binary packages of Mercurial are available for
      every popular operating system.  These make it easy to start
      using Mercurial on your computer immediately.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Linux</title>

      <para id="x_2">Because each Linux distribution has its own packaging

	package managers that will let you install Mercurial with a
	single click; the package name to look for is
	<literal>mercurial</literal>.</para>

      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem><para id="x_4">Debian:</para>
	  <programlisting>apt-get install mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_5">Fedora Core:</para>
	  <programlisting>yum install mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_6">Gentoo:</para>
	  <programlisting>emerge mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_7">OpenSUSE:</para>
	  <programlisting>yum install mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_8">Ubuntu: Ubuntu's Mercurial package is based on
	    Debian's.  To install it, run the following
	    command.</para>
	  <programlisting>apt-get install mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
      </itemizedlist>

    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Solaris</title>

      <para id="x_9">SunFreeWare, at <ulink
	  url="http://www.sunfreeware.com">http://www.sunfreeware.com</ulink>, 
	is a good source for a large number of pre-built Solaris
	packages for 32 and 64 bit Intel and Sparc architectures,
	including current versions of Mercurial.</para>

    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Mac OS X</title>

      <para id="x_a">Lee Cantey publishes an installer of Mercurial for Mac OS
	X at <ulink
	  url="http://mercurial.berkwood.com">http://mercurial.berkwood.com</ulink>. 
	This package works on both Intel- and Power-based Macs. Before
	you can use it, you must install a compatible version of
	Universal MacPython <citation>web:macpython</citation>. This
	is easy to do; simply follow the instructions on Lee's
	site.</para>

      <para id="x_b">It's also possible to install Mercurial using Fink or
	MacPorts, two popular free package managers for Mac OS X.  If
	you have Fink, use <command>sudo apt-get install
	  mercurial-py25</command>.  If MacPorts, <command>sudo port
	  install mercurial</command>.</para>

    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Windows</title>

      <para id="x_c">Lee Cantey publishes an installer of Mercurial for Windows
	at <ulink
	  url="http://mercurial.berkwood.com">http://mercurial.berkwood.com</ulink>. 
	This package has no external dependencies; it <quote>just
	  works</quote>.</para>

      <note>
	<para id="x_d">  The Windows version of Mercurial does not
	  automatically convert line endings between Windows and Unix
	  styles.  If you want to share work with Unix users, you must
	  do a little additional configuration work. XXX Flesh this
	  out.</para>
      </note>

    </sect2>
  </sect1>
  <sect1>
    <title>Getting started</title>

    <para id="x_e">To begin, we'll use the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	version</command> command to find out whether Mercurial is

      <para id="x_13"><emphasis>Copying</emphasis> a repository is just a little
	bit special.  While you could use a normal file copying
	command to make a copy of a repository, it's best to use a
	built-in command that Mercurial provides.  This command is
	called <command role="hg-cmd">hg clone</command>, because it
	creates an identical copy of an existing repository.</para>

      &interaction.tour.clone;

      <para id="x_14">If our clone succeeded, we should now have a local
	directory called <filename class="directory">hello</filename>.
	This directory will contain some files.</para>

      &interaction.tour.ls;

      <para id="x_15">These files have the same contents and history in our
	repository as they do in the repository we cloned.</para>

      <para id="x_16">Every Mercurial repository is complete, self-contained,
	and independent.  It contains its own private copy of a
	project's files and history.  A cloned repository remembers
	the location of the repository it was cloned from, but it does
	not communicate with that repository, or any other, unless you
	tell it to.</para>

      <para id="x_17">What this means for now is that we're free to experiment
	with our repository, safe in the knowledge that it's a private
	<quote>sandbox</quote> that won't affect anyone else.</para>

    <title>A tour through history</title>

    <para id="x_1b">One of the first things we might want to do with a new,
      unfamiliar repository is understand its history.  The <command
	role="hg-cmd">hg log</command> command gives us a view of
      history.</para>

    &interaction.tour.log;

    <para id="x_1c">By default, this command prints a brief paragraph of output
      for each change to the project that was recorded.  In Mercurial

      <emphasis>changeset</emphasis>, because it can contain a record
      of changes to several files.</para>

    <para id="x_1d">The fields in a record of output from <command
	role="hg-cmd">hg log</command> are as follows.</para>
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem><para id="x_1e"><literal>changeset</literal>: This field has the
	  format of a number, followed by a colon, followed by a
	  hexadecimal string.  These are
	  <emphasis>identifiers</emphasis> for the changeset.  There
	  are two identifiers because the number is shorter and easier
	  to type than the hex string.</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_1f"><literal>user</literal>: The identity of the
	  person who created the changeset.  This is a free-form
	  field, but it most often contains a person's name and email
	  address.</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_20"><literal>date</literal>: The date and time on

	  it was created.  (The date and time are local to that
	  timezone; they display what time and date it was for the
	  person who created the changeset.)</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_21"><literal>summary</literal>: The first line of
	  the text message that the creator of the changeset entered
	  to describe the changeset.</para></listitem></itemizedlist>
    <para id="x_22">The default output printed by <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	log</command> is purely a summary; it is missing a lot of
      detail.</para>

    <para id="x_23"><xref linkend="fig:tour-basic:history"/> provides
      a graphical representation of the history of the <filename
	class="directory">hello</filename> repository, to make it a
      little easier to see which direction history is

	great importance. Recall that the <literal>changeset</literal>
	field in the output from <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  log</command> identifies a changeset using both a number and
	a hexadecimal string.</para>
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem><para id="x_27">The revision number is <emphasis>only valid in
	      that repository</emphasis>,</para></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_28">while the hex string is the
	    <emphasis>permanent, unchanging identifier</emphasis> that
	    will always identify that exact changeset in
	    <emphasis>every</emphasis> copy of the
	    repository.</para></listitem></itemizedlist>
      <para id="x_29">This distinction is important.  If you send someone an
	email talking about <quote>revision 33</quote>, there's a high
	likelihood that their revision 33 will <emphasis>not be the
	  same</emphasis> as yours.  The reason for this is that a
	revision number depends on the order in which changes arrived
	in a repository, and there is no guarantee that the same
	changes will happen in the same order in different
	repositories. Three changes $a,b,c$ can easily appear in one
	repository as $0,1,2$, while in another as $1,0,2$.</para>

      <para id="x_2a">Mercurial uses revision numbers purely as a convenient
	shorthand.  If you need to discuss a changeset with someone,
	or make a record of a changeset for some other reason (for
	example, in a bug report), use the hexadecimal

      <para id="x_2b">To narrow the output of <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  log</command> down to a single revision, use the <option
	  role="hg-opt-log">-r</option> (or <option
	  role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>) option.  You can use
	either a revision number or a long-form changeset identifier,
	and you can provide as many revisions as you want.</para>

      &interaction.tour.log-r;

      <para id="x_2c">If you want to see the history of several revisions

	(if you've never seen a unified diff before, see <xref
	  linkend="sec:mq:patch"/> for an overview).</para>

      &interaction.tour.log-vp;

    </sect2>
  </sect1>
  <sect1>
    <title>All about command options</title>

    <para id="x_30">Let's take a brief break from exploring Mercurial commands
      to discuss a pattern in the way that they work; you may find

    <para id="x_31">Mercurial has a consistent and straightforward approach to
      dealing with the options that you can pass to commands.  It
      follows the conventions for options that are common to modern
      Linux and Unix systems.</para>
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem><para id="x_32">Every option has a long name.  For example, as
	  we've already seen, the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    log</command> command accepts a <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option> option.</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_33">Most options have short names, too.  Instead of
	  <option role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>, we can use <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">-r</option>.  (The reason that some
	  options don't have short names is that the options in
	  question are rarely used.)</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_34">Long options start with two dashes (e.g. <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>), while short options
	  start with one (e.g. <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">-r</option>).</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_35">Option naming and usage is consistent across
	  commands.  For example, every command that lets you specify
	  a changeset ID or revision number accepts both <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">-r</option> and <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>
	  arguments.</para></listitem></itemizedlist>
    <para id="x_36">In the examples throughout this book, I use short options
      instead of long.  This just reflects my own preference, so don't
      read anything significant into it.</para>

    <para id="x_37">Most commands that print output of some kind will print more
      output when passed a <option role="hg-opt-global">-v</option>
      (or <option role="hg-opt-global">--verbose</option>) option, and
      less when passed <option role="hg-opt-global">-q</option> (or
      <option role="hg-opt-global">--quiet</option>).</para>

  </sect1>
  <sect1>
    <title>Making and reviewing changes</title>

      repository of its own.  We use the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	clone</command> command, but we don't need to clone a copy of
      the remote repository.  Since we already have a copy of it
      locally, we can just clone that instead.  This is much faster
      than cloning over the network, and cloning a local repository
      uses less disk space in most cases, too.</para>

    &interaction.tour.reclone;

    <para id="x_3a">As an aside, it's often good practice to keep a
      <quote>pristine</quote> copy of a remote repository around,

      local clones are so cheap, there's almost no overhead to cloning
      and destroying repositories whenever you want.</para>

    <para id="x_3b">In our <filename class="directory">my-hello</filename>
      repository, we have a file <filename>hello.c</filename> that
      contains the classic <quote>hello, world</quote> program. Let's
      use the ancient and venerable <command>sed</command> command to
      edit this file so that it prints a second line of output.  (I'm
      only using <command>sed</command> to do this because it's easy
      to write a scripted example this way.  Since you're not under
      the same constraint, you probably won't want to use
      <command>sed</command>; simply use your preferred text editor to
      do the same thing.)</para>

    &interaction.tour.sed;

    <para id="x_3c">Mercurial's <command role="hg-cmd">hg status</command>
      command will tell us what Mercurial knows about the files in the
      repository.</para>

      <emphasis>inform</emphasis> Mercurial that we were going to
      modify the file before we started, or that we had modified the
      file after we were done; it was able to figure this out
      itself.</para>

    <para id="x_3f">It's a little bit helpful to know that we've modified
      <filename>hello.c</filename>, but we might prefer to know
      exactly <emphasis>what</emphasis> changes we've made to it.  To
      do this, we use the <command role="hg-cmd">hg diff</command>
      command.</para>

    &interaction.tour.diff;

  </sect1>
  <sect1>
    <title>Recording changes in a new changeset</title>

    <para id="x_40">We can modify files, build and test our changes, and use

	      role="special">.hgrc</filename> in your home directory.
	    Mercurial will use this file to look up your personalised
	    configuration settings.  The initial contents of your
	    <filename role="special">.hgrc</filename> should look like
	    this.</para>
	<programlisting># This is a Mercurial configuration file.
[ui]
username = Firstname Lastname
&lt;[e-mail]&gt;</programlisting>

	<para id="x_4b">The <quote><literal>[ui]</literal></quote> line begins a
	  <emphasis>section</emphasis> of the config file, so you can
	  read the <quote><literal>username = ...</literal></quote>
	  line as meaning <quote>set the value of the

      <sect3>
	<title>Choosing a user name</title>

	<para id="x_4c">You can use any text you like as the value of
	    the <literal>username</literal> config item, since this
	    information is for reading by other people, but for
	    interpreting by Mercurial.  The convention that most
	    people follow is to use their name and email address, as
	    in the example above.</para>
	<note>
	  <para id="x_4d">Mercurial's built-in web server obfuscates
	      email addresses, to make it more difficult for the email

       &interaction.tour.commit;

      <para id="x_4f">The editor that the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    commit</command> command drops us into will contain an
	  empty line, followed by a number of lines starting with
	  <quote><literal>HG:</literal></quote>.</para>

    <programlisting>XXX fix this XXX</programlisting>

      <para id="x_50">Mercurial ignores the lines that start with
	  <quote><literal>HG:</literal></quote>; it uses them only to
	  tell us which files it's recording changes to.  Modifying or
	  deleting these lines has no effect.</para>

	    log</command>, but it only displays the newest revision in
	  the repository.</para>

      &interaction.tour.tip;

      <para id="x_57">We refer to
	  the newest revision in the repository as the tip revision,
	  or simply the tip.</para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Sharing changes</title>

	  command <emphasis>would</emphasis> pull into the repository,
	  without actually pulling the changes in.</para>

      &interaction.tour.incoming;

      <para id="x_5b">(Of course, someone could
	  cause more changesets to appear in the repository that we
	  ran <command role="hg-cmd">hg incoming</command> in, before
	  we get a chance to <command role="hg-cmd">hg pull</command>
	  the changes, so that we could end up pulling changes that we
	  didn't expect.)</para>

      <para id="x_5c">Bringing changes into a repository is a simple
	  matter of running the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    pull</command> command, and telling it which repository to
	  pull from.</para>

	  pull</command> doesn't update the working directory
	automatically.  There's actually a good reason for this: you
	can use <command role="hg-cmd">hg update</command> to update
	the working directory to the state it was in at <emphasis>any
	  revision</emphasis> in the history of the repository.  If
	you had the working directory updated to an old revision---to
	hunt down the origin of a bug, say---and ran a <command
	  role="hg-cmd">hg pull</command> which automatically updated
	the working directory to a new revision, you might not be
	terribly happy.</para>
      <para id="x_60">However, since pull-then-update is such a common thing to
	do, Mercurial lets you combine the two by passing the <option

	  <command role="hg-cmd">hg push</command> command does the
	  actual push.</para>

      &interaction.tour.push;

      <para id="x_69">As with
	  <command role="hg-cmd">hg pull</command>, the <command
	    role="hg-cmd">hg push</command> command does not update
	  the working directory in the repository that it's pushing
	  changes into. (Unlike <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    pull</command>, <command role="hg-cmd">hg push</command>
	  does not provide a <literal>-u</literal> option that updates
	  the other repository's working directory.)</para>

      <para id="x_6a">What happens if we try to pull or push changes
	  and the receiving repository already has those changes?
	  Nothing too exciting.</para>

766:3b33dd6aba87

    <title>Installing Mercurial on your system</title>

    <para id="x_1">Prebuilt binary packages of Mercurial are available for
      every popular operating system.  These make it easy to start
      using Mercurial on your computer immediately.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Windows</title>

      <para id="x_c">The best version of Mercurial for Windows is
	TortoiseHg, which can be found at <ulink
	  url="http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/Home">http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/Home</ulink>. 
	This package has no external dependencies; it <quote>just
	  works</quote>.  It provides both command line and graphical
	user interfaces.</para>

    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Mac OS X</title>

      <para id="x_a">Lee Cantey publishes an installer of Mercurial
	for Mac OS X at <ulink
	  url="http://mercurial.berkwood.com">http://mercurial.berkwood.com</ulink>.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Linux</title>

      <para id="x_2">Because each Linux distribution has its own packaging

	package managers that will let you install Mercurial with a
	single click; the package name to look for is
	<literal>mercurial</literal>.</para>

      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem><para id="x_4">Ubuntu and Debian:</para>
	  <programlisting>apt-get install mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_5">Fedora and OpenSUSE:</para>
	  <programlisting>yum install mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_6">Gentoo:</para>
	  <programlisting>emerge mercurial</programlisting></listitem>
      </itemizedlist>

    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Solaris</title>

      <para id="x_9">SunFreeWare, at <ulink
	  url="http://www.sunfreeware.com">http://www.sunfreeware.com</ulink>, 
	provides prebuilt packages of Mercurial.</para>

    </sect2>

  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Getting started</title>

    <para id="x_e">To begin, we'll use the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	version</command> command to find out whether Mercurial is

      <para id="x_13"><emphasis>Copying</emphasis> a repository is just a little
	bit special.  While you could use a normal file copying
	command to make a copy of a repository, it's best to use a
	built-in command that Mercurial provides.  This command is
	called <command role="hg-cmd">hg clone</command>, because it
	makes an identical copy of an existing repository.</para>

      &interaction.tour.clone;

      <para>One advantage of using <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  clone</command> is that, as we can see above, it lets us clone
	repositories over the network.  Another is that it remembers
	where we cloned from, which we'll find useful soon when we
	want to fetch new changes from another repository.</para>

      <para id="x_14">If our clone succeeded, we should now have a local
	directory called <filename class="directory">hello</filename>.
	This directory will contain some files.</para>

      &interaction.tour.ls;

      <para id="x_15">These files have the same contents and history in our
	repository as they do in the repository we cloned.</para>

      <para id="x_16">Every Mercurial repository is complete,
	self-contained, and independent.  It contains its own private
	copy of a project's files and history.  As we just mentioned,
	a cloned repository remembers the location of the repository
	it was cloned from, but Mercurial will not communicate with
	that repository, or any other, unless you tell it to.</para>

      <para id="x_17">What this means for now is that we're free to experiment
	with our repository, safe in the knowledge that it's a private
	<quote>sandbox</quote> that won't affect anyone else.</para>

    <title>A tour through history</title>

    <para id="x_1b">One of the first things we might want to do with a new,
      unfamiliar repository is understand its history.  The <command
	role="hg-cmd">hg log</command> command gives us a view of
      the history of changes in the repository.</para>

    &interaction.tour.log;

    <para id="x_1c">By default, this command prints a brief paragraph of output
      for each change to the project that was recorded.  In Mercurial

      <emphasis>changeset</emphasis>, because it can contain a record
      of changes to several files.</para>

    <para id="x_1d">The fields in a record of output from <command
	role="hg-cmd">hg log</command> are as follows.</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem><para id="x_1e"><literal>changeset</literal>: This
	  field has the format of a number, followed by a colon,
	  followed by a hexadecimal (or <emphasis>hex</emphasis>)
	  string.  These are <emphasis>identifiers</emphasis> for the
	  changeset.  The hex string is a unique identifier: the same
	  hex string will always refer to the same changeset. The
	  number is shorter and easier to type than the hex string,
	  but it isn't unique: the same number in two different clones
	  of a repository may identify different changesets.  Why
	  provide the number at all, then?  For local
	  convenience.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_1f"><literal>user</literal>: The identity of the
	  person who created the changeset.  This is a free-form
	  field, but it most often contains a person's name and email
	  address.</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_20"><literal>date</literal>: The date and time on

	  it was created.  (The date and time are local to that
	  timezone; they display what time and date it was for the
	  person who created the changeset.)</para></listitem>
      <listitem><para id="x_21"><literal>summary</literal>: The first line of
	  the text message that the creator of the changeset entered
	  to describe the changeset.</para></listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>Some changesets, such as the first in the list above,
	  have a <literal>tag</literal> field.  A tag is another way
	  to identify a changeset, by giving it an easy-to-remember
	  name. (The tag named <literal>tip</literal> is special: it
	  always refers to the newest change in a repository.)</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <para id="x_22">The default output printed by <command
	role="hg-cmd">hg log</command> is purely a summary; it is
      missing a lot of detail.</para>

    <para id="x_23"><xref linkend="fig:tour-basic:history"/> provides
      a graphical representation of the history of the <filename
	class="directory">hello</filename> repository, to make it a
      little easier to see which direction history is

	great importance. Recall that the <literal>changeset</literal>
	field in the output from <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  log</command> identifies a changeset using both a number and
	a hexadecimal string.</para>
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem><para id="x_27">The revision number is a handy
	    notation that is <emphasis>only valid in that
	      repository</emphasis>.</para></listitem>
	<listitem><para id="x_28">The hexadecimal string is the
	    <emphasis>permanent, unchanging identifier</emphasis> that
	    will always identify that exact changeset in
	    <emphasis>every</emphasis> copy of the
	    repository.</para></listitem></itemizedlist>

      <para id="x_29">This distinction is important.  If you send
	someone an email talking about <quote>revision 33</quote>,
	there's a high likelihood that their revision 33 will
	<emphasis>not be the same</emphasis> as yours.  The reason for
	this is that a revision number depends on the order in which
	changes arrived in a repository, and there is no guarantee
	that the same changes will happen in the same order in
	different repositories. Three changes <literal>a,b,c</literal>
	can easily appear in one repository as
	<literal>0,1,2</literal>, while in another as
	<literal>0,2,1</literal>.</para>

      <para id="x_2a">Mercurial uses revision numbers purely as a convenient
	shorthand.  If you need to discuss a changeset with someone,
	or make a record of a changeset for some other reason (for
	example, in a bug report), use the hexadecimal

      <para id="x_2b">To narrow the output of <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  log</command> down to a single revision, use the <option
	  role="hg-opt-log">-r</option> (or <option
	  role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>) option.  You can use
	either a revision number or a hexadecimal identifier,
	and you can provide as many revisions as you want.</para>

      &interaction.tour.log-r;

      <para id="x_2c">If you want to see the history of several revisions

	(if you've never seen a unified diff before, see <xref
	  linkend="sec:mq:patch"/> for an overview).</para>

      &interaction.tour.log-vp;

      <para>The <option role="hg-opt-log">-p</option> option is
	tremendously useful, so it's well worth remembering.</para>

    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>All about command options</title>

    <para id="x_30">Let's take a brief break from exploring Mercurial commands
      to discuss a pattern in the way that they work; you may find

    <para id="x_31">Mercurial has a consistent and straightforward approach to
      dealing with the options that you can pass to commands.  It
      follows the conventions for options that are common to modern
      Linux and Unix systems.</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_32">Every option has a long name.  For example, as
	  we've already seen, the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    log</command> command accepts a <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option> option.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_33">Most options have short names, too.  Instead
	  of <option role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>, we can use
	  <option role="hg-opt-log">-r</option>.  (The reason that
	  some options don't have short names is that the options in
	  question are rarely used.)</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_34">Long options start with two dashes (e.g.
	  <option role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option>), while short
	  options start with one (e.g. <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">-r</option>).</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_35">Option naming and usage is consistent across
	  commands.  For example, every command that lets you specify
	  a changeset ID or revision number accepts both <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">-r</option> and <option
	    role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option> arguments.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>If you are using short options, you can save typing by
	  running them together. For example, the command <command
	    role="hg-cmd">hg log -v -p -r 2</command> can be written
	  as <command role="hg-cmd">hg log -vpr2</command>.</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <para id="x_36">In the examples throughout this book, I use short options
      instead of long.  This just reflects my own preference, so don't
      read anything significant into it.</para>

    <para id="x_37">Most commands that print output of some kind will print more
      output when passed a <option role="hg-opt-global">-v</option>
      (or <option role="hg-opt-global">--verbose</option>) option, and
      less when passed <option role="hg-opt-global">-q</option> (or
      <option role="hg-opt-global">--quiet</option>).</para>

    <note>
      <title>Option naming consistency</title>

      <para>Almost always, Mercurial commands use consistent option
	names to refer to the same concepts.  For instance, if a
	command deals with changesets, you'll always identify them
	with <option role="hg-opt-log">--rev</option> or <option
	  role="hg-opt-log">-r</option>.  This consistent use of
	option names makes it easier to remember what options a
	particular command takes.</para>
    </note>

  </sect1>
  <sect1>
    <title>Making and reviewing changes</title>

      repository of its own.  We use the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	clone</command> command, but we don't need to clone a copy of
      the remote repository.  Since we already have a copy of it
      locally, we can just clone that instead.  This is much faster
      than cloning over the network, and cloning a local repository
      uses less disk space in most cases, too<footnote>
	<para>The saving of space arises when source and destination
	  repositories are on the same filesystem, in which case
	  Mercurial will use hardlinks to do copy-on-write sharing of
	  its internal metadata.  If that explanation meant nothing to
	  you, don't worry: everything happens transparently and
	  automatically, and you don't need to understand it.</para>
	</footnote>.</para>

    &interaction.tour.reclone;

    <para id="x_3a">As an aside, it's often good practice to keep a
      <quote>pristine</quote> copy of a remote repository around,

      local clones are so cheap, there's almost no overhead to cloning
      and destroying repositories whenever you want.</para>

    <para id="x_3b">In our <filename class="directory">my-hello</filename>
      repository, we have a file <filename>hello.c</filename> that
      contains the classic <quote>hello, world</quote> program.</para>

    &interaction.tour.cat1;

    <para>Let's edit this file so that it prints a second line of
      output.</para>

    &interaction.tour.cat2;

    <para id="x_3c">Mercurial's <command role="hg-cmd">hg status</command>
      command will tell us what Mercurial knows about the files in the
      repository.</para>

      <emphasis>inform</emphasis> Mercurial that we were going to
      modify the file before we started, or that we had modified the
      file after we were done; it was able to figure this out
      itself.</para>

    <para id="x_3f">It's somewhat helpful to know that we've modified
      <filename>hello.c</filename>, but we might prefer to know
      exactly <emphasis>what</emphasis> changes we've made to it.  To
      do this, we use the <command role="hg-cmd">hg diff</command>
      command.</para>

    &interaction.tour.diff;

    <tip>
      <title>Understanding patches</title>

      <para>Remember to take a look at <xref
	  linkend="sec:mq:patch"/> if you don't know how to read
	output above.</para>
    </tip>
  </sect1>
  <sect1>
    <title>Recording changes in a new changeset</title>

    <para id="x_40">We can modify files, build and test our changes, and use

	      role="special">.hgrc</filename> in your home directory.
	    Mercurial will use this file to look up your personalised
	    configuration settings.  The initial contents of your
	    <filename role="special">.hgrc</filename> should look like
	    this.</para>

	<remark>Figure out what the appropriate directory is on
	  Windows.</remark>

	<programlisting># This is a Mercurial configuration file.
[ui]
username = Firstname Lastname &lt;[e-mail]&gt;</programlisting>

	<para id="x_4b">The <quote><literal>[ui]</literal></quote> line begins a
	  <emphasis>section</emphasis> of the config file, so you can
	  read the <quote><literal>username = ...</literal></quote>
	  line as meaning <quote>set the value of the

      <sect3>
	<title>Choosing a user name</title>

	<para id="x_4c">You can use any text you like as the value of
	    the <literal>username</literal> config item, since this
	    information is for reading by other people, but will not be
	    interpreted by Mercurial.  The convention that most
	    people follow is to use their name and email address, as
	    in the example above.</para>
	<note>
	  <para id="x_4d">Mercurial's built-in web server obfuscates
	      email addresses, to make it more difficult for the email

       &interaction.tour.commit;

      <para id="x_4f">The editor that the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    commit</command> command drops us into will contain an
	  empty line or two, followed by a number of lines starting with
	  <quote><literal>HG:</literal></quote>.</para>

    <programlisting>
This is where I type my commit comment.

HG: Enter commit message.  Lines beginning with 'HG:' are removed.
HG: --
HG: user: Bryan O'Sullivan &lt;[e-mail]&gt;
HG: branch 'default'
HG: changed hello.c</programlisting>

      <para id="x_50">Mercurial ignores the lines that start with
	  <quote><literal>HG:</literal></quote>; it uses them only to
	  tell us which files it's recording changes to.  Modifying or
	  deleting these lines has no effect.</para>

	    log</command>, but it only displays the newest revision in
	  the repository.</para>

      &interaction.tour.tip;

      <para id="x_57">We refer to the newest revision in the
	repository as the <emphasis>tip revision</emphasis>, or simply
	the <emphasis>tip</emphasis>.</para>

      <para>By the way, the <command role="hg-cmd">hg tip</command>
	command accepts many of the same options as <command
	  role="hg-cmd">hg log</command>, so <option
	  role="hg-opt-global">-v</option> above indicates <quote>be
	  verbose</quote>, <option role="hg-opt-tip">-p</option>
	specifies <quote>print a patch</quote>.  The use of <option
	  role="hg-opt-tip">-p</option> to print patches is another
	example of the consistent naming we mentioned earlier.</para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Sharing changes</title>

	  command <emphasis>would</emphasis> pull into the repository,
	  without actually pulling the changes in.</para>

      &interaction.tour.incoming;

      <para id="x_5b">Suppose you're pulling changes from a repository
      on the network somewhere. While you are looking at the <command
	  role="hg-cmd">hg incoming</command> output, and before you
	pull those changes, someone might have committed something in
	the remote repository. This means that it's possible to pull
	more changes than you saw when using <command
	  role="hg-cmd">hg incoming</command>.</para>

      <para id="x_5c">Bringing changes into a repository is a simple
	  matter of running the <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	    pull</command> command, and telling it which repository to
	  pull from.</para>

	  pull</command> doesn't update the working directory
	automatically.  There's actually a good reason for this: you
	can use <command role="hg-cmd">hg update</command> to update
	the working directory to the state it was in at <emphasis>any
	  revision</emphasis> in the history of the repository.  If
	you had the working directory updated to an old revision&emdash;to
	hunt down the origin of a bug, say&emdash;and ran a <command
	  role="hg-cmd">hg pull</command> which automatically updated
	the working directory to a new revision, you might not be
	terribly happy.</para>
      <para id="x_60">However, since pull-then-update is such a common thing to
	do, Mercurial lets you combine the two by passing the <option

	  <command role="hg-cmd">hg push</command> command does the
	  actual push.</para>

      &interaction.tour.push;

      <para id="x_69">As with <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  pull</command>, the <command role="hg-cmd">hg push</command>
	command does not update the working directory in the
	repository that it's pushing changes into. Unlike <command
	  role="hg-cmd">hg pull</command>, <command role="hg-cmd">hg
	  push</command> does not provide a <literal>-u</literal>
	option that updates the other repository's working directory.
	This asymmetry is deliberate: the repository we're pushing to
	might be on a remote server and shared between several people.
	If we were to update its working directory while someone was
	working in it, their work would be disrupted.</para>

      <para id="x_6a">What happens if we try to pull or push changes
	  and the receiving repository already has those changes?
	  Nothing too exciting.</para>