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<appendix id="svn">
  <?dbhtml filename="migrating-to-mercurial.html"?>
<title>Migrating to Mercurial</title>

  <para>A common way to test the waters with a new revision control
    tool is to experiment with switching an existing project, rather
    than starting a new project from scratch.</para>

  <para>In this appendix, we discuss how to import a project's history
    into Mercurial, and what to look out for if you are used to a
    different revision control system.</para>

  <sect1>
    <title>Importing history from another system</title>

    <para>Mercurial ships with an extension named
      <literal>convert</literal>, which can import project history
      from most popular revision control systems.  At the time this
      book was written, it could import history from the following
      systems:</para>
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
	<para>Subversion</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>CVS</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>git</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>Darcs</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>Bazaar</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>Monotone</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>GNU Arch</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>Mercurial</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <para>(To see why Mercurial itself is supported as a source, see
      <xref linkend="svn.filemap"/>.)</para>

    <para>You can enable the extension in the usual way, by editing
      your <filename>~/.hgrc</filename> file.</para>

    <programlisting>[extensions]
convert =</programlisting>

    <para>This will make a <command>hg convert</command> command
      available.  The command is easy to use.  For instance, this
      command will import the Subversion history for the Nose unit
      testing framework into Mercurial.</para>

    <screen><prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>hg convert http://python-nose.googlecode.com/svn/trunk</userinput></screen>

    <para>The <literal>convert</literal> extension operates
      incrementally.  In other words, after you have run <command>hg
	convert</command> once, running it again will import any new
      revisions committed after the first run began.  Incremental
      conversion will only work if you run <command>hg
	convert</command> in the same Mercurial repository that you

      repository.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Mapping user names</title>

      <para>Some revision control tools save only short usernames with
	commits, and these can be difficult to interpret.  The norm
	with Mercurial is to save a committer's name and email
	address, which is much more useful for talking to them after
	the fact.</para>

      <para>If you are converting a tree from a revision control
	system that uses short names, you can map those names to
	longer equivalents by passing a <option>--authors</option>
	option to <command>hg convert</command>.  This option accepts
	a file name that should contain entries of the following
	form.</para>

      <programlisting>arist = Aristotle &lt;[e-mail]&gt;
soc = Socrates &lt;[e-mail]&gt;</programlisting>

      <para>Whenever <literal>convert</literal> encounters a commit
	with the username <literal>arist</literal> in the source
	repository, it will use the name <literal>Aristotle
	  &lt;[e-mail]&gt;</literal> in the converted
	Mercurial revision.  If no match is found for a name, it is
	used verbatim.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="svn.filemap">
      <title>Tidying up the tree</title>

      <para>Not all projects have pristine history.  There may be a
	directory that should never have been checked in, a file that
	is too big, or a whole hierarchy that needs to be
	refactored.</para>

      <para>The <literal>convert</literal> extension supports the idea
	of a <quote>file map</quote> that can reorganize the files and
	directories in a project as it imports the project's history.
	This is useful not only when importing history from other
	revision control systems, but also to prune or refactor a
	Mercurial tree.</para>

      <para>To specify a file map, use the <option>--filemap</option>
	option and supply a file name.  A file map contains lines of the
	following forms.</para>

      <programlisting># This is a comment.
# Empty lines are ignored.	

exclude path/to/file

rename from/some/path to/some/other/place
</programlisting>

      <para>The <literal>include</literal> directive causes a file, or
	all files under a directory, to be included in the destination
	repository.  This also excludes all other files and dirs not
	explicitely included.  The <literal>exclude</literal>
	directive causes files or directories to be omitted, and
	others not explicitly mentioned to be included.</para>

      <para>To move a file or directory from one location to another,
	use the <literal>rename</literal> directive.  If you need to
	move a file or directory from a subdirectory into the root of
	the repository, use <literal>.</literal> as the second
	argument to the <literal>rename</literal> directive.</para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Migrating from Subversion</title>

    <para>Subversion is currently the most popular open source
      revision control system. Although there are many differences
      between Mercurial and Subversion, making the transition from
      Subversion to Mercurial is not particularly difficult.  The two
      have similar command sets and generally uniform
      interfaces.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Philosophical differences</title>

      <para>The fundamental difference between Subversion and
	Mercurial is of course that Subversion is centralized, while
	Mercurial is distributed.  Since Mercurial stores all of a
	project's history on your local drive, it only needs to
	perform a network access when you want to explicitly
	communicate with another repository. In contrast, Subversion
	stores very little information locally, and the client must
	thus contact its server for many common operations.</para>

      <para>Subversion more or less gets away without a well-defined
	notion of a branch: which portion of a server's namespace
	qualifies as a branch is a matter of convention, with the
	software providing no enforcement.  Mercurial treats a
	repository as the unit of branch management.</para>

      <sect3>
	<title>Scope of commands</title>

	<para>Since Subversion doesn't know what parts of its
	  namespace are really branches, it treats most commands as
	  requests to operate at and below whatever directory you are
	  currently visiting.  For instance, if you run <command>svn
	    log</command>, you'll get the history of whatever part of
	  the tree you're looking at, not the tree as a whole.</para>

	<para>Mercurial's commands behave differently, by defaulting
	  to operating over an entire repository.  Run <command>hg
	    log</command> and it will tell you the history of the
	  entire tree, no matter what part of the working directory
	  you're visiting at the time.  If you want the history of
	  just a particular file or directory, simply supply it by
	  name, e.g. <command>hg log src</command>.</para>

	<para>From my own experience, this difference in default
	  behaviors is probably the most likely to trip you up if you
	  have to switch back and forth frequently between the two
	  tools.</para>
      </sect3>

      <sect3>
	<title>Multi-user operation and safety</title>

	<para>With Subversion, it is normal (though slightly frowned
	  upon) for multiple people to collaborate in a single branch.
	  If Alice and Bob are working together, and Alice commits
	  some changes to their shared branch, Bob must update his
	  client's view of the branch before he can commit.  Since at
	  this time he has no permanent record of the changes he has
	  made, he can corrupt or lose his modifications during and
	  after his update.</para>

	<para>Mercurial encourages a commit-then-merge model instead.
	  Bob commits his changes locally before pulling changes from,
	  or pushing them to, the server that he shares with Alice.
	  If Alice pushed her changes before Bob tries to push his, he
	  will not be able to push his changes until he pulls hers,
	  merges with them, and commits the result of the merge.  If
	  he makes a mistake during the merge, he still has the option
	  of reverting to the commit that recorded his changes.</para>

	<para>It is worth emphasizing that these are the common ways
	  of working with these tools. Subversion supports a safer
	  work-in-your-own-branch model, but it is cumbersome enough
	  in practice to not be widely used.  Mercurial can support
	  the less safe mode of allowing changes to be pulled in and
	  merged on top of uncommitted edits, but this is considered

      </sect3>

      <sect3>
	<title>Published vs local changes</title>

	<para>A Subversion <command>svn commit</command> command
	  immediately publishes changes to a server, where they can be
	  seen by everyone who has read access.</para>

	<para>With Mercurial, commits are always local, and must be
	  published via a <command>hg push</command> command
	  afterwards.</para>

	<para>Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.  The
	  Subversion model means that changes are published, and hence
	  reviewable and usable, immediately.  On the other hand, this
	  means that a user must have commit access to a repository in
	  order to use the software in a normal way, and commit access
	  is not lightly given out by most open source
	  projects.</para>

	<para>The Mercurial approach allows anyone who can clone a
	  repository to commit changes without the need for someone
	  else's permission, and they can then publish their changes
	  and continue to participate however they see fit.  The
	  distinction between committing and pushing does open up the
	  possibility of someone committing changes to their laptop

  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Useful tips for newcomers</title>

    <para>Under some revision control systems, printing a diff for a
      single committed revision can be painful. For instance, with
      Subversion, to see what changed in revision 104654, you must
      type <command>svn diff -r104653:104654</command>. Mercurial
      eliminates the need to type the revision ID twice in this common
      case. For a plain diff, <command>hg export 104654</command>. For
      a log message followed by a diff, <command>hg log -r104654
	-p</command>.</para>

    <para>When you run <command>hg status</command> without any
      arguments, it prints the status of the entire tree, with paths
      relative to the root of the repository.  This makes it tricky to
      copy a file name from the output of <command>hg status</command>
      into the command line.  If you supply a file or directory name
      to <command>hg status</command>, it will print paths relative to

818:75ccc1e89aef

<appendix id="svn">
  <?dbhtml filename="migrating-to-mercurial.html"?>
<title>Migrating to Mercurial</title>

  <para id="x_6e0">A common way to test the waters with a new revision control
    tool is to experiment with switching an existing project, rather
    than starting a new project from scratch.</para>

  <para id="x_6e1">In this appendix, we discuss how to import a project's history
    into Mercurial, and what to look out for if you are used to a
    different revision control system.</para>

  <sect1>
    <title>Importing history from another system</title>

    <para id="x_6e2">Mercurial ships with an extension named
      <literal>convert</literal>, which can import project history
      from most popular revision control systems.  At the time this
      book was written, it could import history from the following
      systems:</para>
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e3">Subversion</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e4">CVS</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e5">git</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e6">Darcs</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e7">Bazaar</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e8">Monotone</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6e9">GNU Arch</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para id="x_6ea">Mercurial</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <para id="x_6eb">(To see why Mercurial itself is supported as a source, see
      <xref linkend="svn.filemap"/>.)</para>

    <para id="x_6ec">You can enable the extension in the usual way, by editing
      your <filename>~/.hgrc</filename> file.</para>

    <programlisting>[extensions]
convert =</programlisting>

    <para id="x_6ed">This will make a <command>hg convert</command> command
      available.  The command is easy to use.  For instance, this
      command will import the Subversion history for the Nose unit
      testing framework into Mercurial.</para>

    <screen><prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>hg convert http://python-nose.googlecode.com/svn/trunk</userinput></screen>

    <para id="x_6ee">The <literal>convert</literal> extension operates
      incrementally.  In other words, after you have run <command>hg
	convert</command> once, running it again will import any new
      revisions committed after the first run began.  Incremental
      conversion will only work if you run <command>hg
	convert</command> in the same Mercurial repository that you

      repository.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Mapping user names</title>

      <para id="x_6ef">Some revision control tools save only short usernames with
	commits, and these can be difficult to interpret.  The norm
	with Mercurial is to save a committer's name and email
	address, which is much more useful for talking to them after
	the fact.</para>

      <para id="x_6f0">If you are converting a tree from a revision control
	system that uses short names, you can map those names to
	longer equivalents by passing a <option>--authors</option>
	option to <command>hg convert</command>.  This option accepts
	a file name that should contain entries of the following
	form.</para>

      <programlisting>arist = Aristotle &lt;[e-mail]&gt;
soc = Socrates &lt;[e-mail]&gt;</programlisting>

      <para id="x_6f1">Whenever <literal>convert</literal> encounters a commit
	with the username <literal>arist</literal> in the source
	repository, it will use the name <literal>Aristotle
	  &lt;[e-mail]&gt;</literal> in the converted
	Mercurial revision.  If no match is found for a name, it is
	used verbatim.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="svn.filemap">
      <title>Tidying up the tree</title>

      <para id="x_6f2">Not all projects have pristine history.  There may be a
	directory that should never have been checked in, a file that
	is too big, or a whole hierarchy that needs to be
	refactored.</para>

      <para id="x_6f3">The <literal>convert</literal> extension supports the idea
	of a <quote>file map</quote> that can reorganize the files and
	directories in a project as it imports the project's history.
	This is useful not only when importing history from other
	revision control systems, but also to prune or refactor a
	Mercurial tree.</para>

      <para id="x_6f4">To specify a file map, use the <option>--filemap</option>
	option and supply a file name.  A file map contains lines of the
	following forms.</para>

      <programlisting># This is a comment.
# Empty lines are ignored.	

exclude path/to/file

rename from/some/path to/some/other/place
</programlisting>

      <para id="x_6f5">The <literal>include</literal> directive causes a file, or
	all files under a directory, to be included in the destination
	repository.  This also excludes all other files and dirs not
	explicitely included.  The <literal>exclude</literal>
	directive causes files or directories to be omitted, and
	others not explicitly mentioned to be included.</para>

      <para id="x_6f6">To move a file or directory from one location to another,
	use the <literal>rename</literal> directive.  If you need to
	move a file or directory from a subdirectory into the root of
	the repository, use <literal>.</literal> as the second
	argument to the <literal>rename</literal> directive.</para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Migrating from Subversion</title>

    <para id="x_6f7">Subversion is currently the most popular open source
      revision control system. Although there are many differences
      between Mercurial and Subversion, making the transition from
      Subversion to Mercurial is not particularly difficult.  The two
      have similar command sets and generally uniform
      interfaces.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Philosophical differences</title>

      <para id="x_6f8">The fundamental difference between Subversion and
	Mercurial is of course that Subversion is centralized, while
	Mercurial is distributed.  Since Mercurial stores all of a
	project's history on your local drive, it only needs to
	perform a network access when you want to explicitly
	communicate with another repository. In contrast, Subversion
	stores very little information locally, and the client must
	thus contact its server for many common operations.</para>

      <para id="x_6f9">Subversion more or less gets away without a well-defined
	notion of a branch: which portion of a server's namespace
	qualifies as a branch is a matter of convention, with the
	software providing no enforcement.  Mercurial treats a
	repository as the unit of branch management.</para>

      <sect3>
	<title>Scope of commands</title>

	<para id="x_6fa">Since Subversion doesn't know what parts of its
	  namespace are really branches, it treats most commands as
	  requests to operate at and below whatever directory you are
	  currently visiting.  For instance, if you run <command>svn
	    log</command>, you'll get the history of whatever part of
	  the tree you're looking at, not the tree as a whole.</para>

	<para id="x_6fb">Mercurial's commands behave differently, by defaulting
	  to operating over an entire repository.  Run <command>hg
	    log</command> and it will tell you the history of the
	  entire tree, no matter what part of the working directory
	  you're visiting at the time.  If you want the history of
	  just a particular file or directory, simply supply it by
	  name, e.g. <command>hg log src</command>.</para>

	<para id="x_6fc">From my own experience, this difference in default
	  behaviors is probably the most likely to trip you up if you
	  have to switch back and forth frequently between the two
	  tools.</para>
      </sect3>

      <sect3>
	<title>Multi-user operation and safety</title>

	<para id="x_6fd">With Subversion, it is normal (though slightly frowned
	  upon) for multiple people to collaborate in a single branch.
	  If Alice and Bob are working together, and Alice commits
	  some changes to their shared branch, Bob must update his
	  client's view of the branch before he can commit.  Since at
	  this time he has no permanent record of the changes he has
	  made, he can corrupt or lose his modifications during and
	  after his update.</para>

	<para id="x_6fe">Mercurial encourages a commit-then-merge model instead.
	  Bob commits his changes locally before pulling changes from,
	  or pushing them to, the server that he shares with Alice.
	  If Alice pushed her changes before Bob tries to push his, he
	  will not be able to push his changes until he pulls hers,
	  merges with them, and commits the result of the merge.  If
	  he makes a mistake during the merge, he still has the option
	  of reverting to the commit that recorded his changes.</para>

	<para id="x_6ff">It is worth emphasizing that these are the common ways
	  of working with these tools. Subversion supports a safer
	  work-in-your-own-branch model, but it is cumbersome enough
	  in practice to not be widely used.  Mercurial can support
	  the less safe mode of allowing changes to be pulled in and
	  merged on top of uncommitted edits, but this is considered

      </sect3>

      <sect3>
	<title>Published vs local changes</title>

	<para id="x_700">A Subversion <command>svn commit</command> command
	  immediately publishes changes to a server, where they can be
	  seen by everyone who has read access.</para>

	<para id="x_701">With Mercurial, commits are always local, and must be
	  published via a <command>hg push</command> command
	  afterwards.</para>

	<para id="x_702">Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.  The
	  Subversion model means that changes are published, and hence
	  reviewable and usable, immediately.  On the other hand, this
	  means that a user must have commit access to a repository in
	  order to use the software in a normal way, and commit access
	  is not lightly given out by most open source
	  projects.</para>

	<para id="x_703">The Mercurial approach allows anyone who can clone a
	  repository to commit changes without the need for someone
	  else's permission, and they can then publish their changes
	  and continue to participate however they see fit.  The
	  distinction between committing and pushing does open up the
	  possibility of someone committing changes to their laptop

  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Useful tips for newcomers</title>

    <para id="x_704">Under some revision control systems, printing a diff for a
      single committed revision can be painful. For instance, with
      Subversion, to see what changed in revision 104654, you must
      type <command>svn diff -r104653:104654</command>. Mercurial
      eliminates the need to type the revision ID twice in this common
      case. For a plain diff, <command>hg export 104654</command>. For
      a log message followed by a diff, <command>hg log -r104654
	-p</command>.</para>

    <para id="x_705">When you run <command>hg status</command> without any
      arguments, it prints the status of the entire tree, with paths
      relative to the root of the repository.  This makes it tricky to
      copy a file name from the output of <command>hg status</command>
      into the command line.  If you supply a file or directory name
      to <command>hg status</command>, it will print paths relative to