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author | Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com> |
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date | Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:22:04 -0700 |
parents | e9154b3daa94 |
children | 7d72167a009c 75ccc1e89aef |
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<!-- vim: set filetype=docbkxml shiftwidth=2 autoindent expandtab tw=77 : --> <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 originally used, because the <literal>convert</literal> extension saves some private metadata in a non-revision-controlled file named <filename>.hg/shamap</filename> inside the target 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 <aristotle@phil.example.gr> soc = Socrates <socrates@phil.example.gr></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 <aristotle@phil.example.gr></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. include path/to/file 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 highly unusual.</para> </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 and walking away for a few days having forgotten to push them, which in rare cases might leave collaborators temporarily stuck.</para> </sect3> </sect2> <sect2> <title>Quick reference</title> <table> <title>Subversion commands and Mercurial equivalents</title> <tgroup cols="3"> <thead> <row> <entry>Subversion</entry> <entry>Mercurial</entry> <entry>Notes</entry> </row> </thead> <tbody> <row> <entry><command>svn add</command></entry> <entry><command>hg add</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn blame</command></entry> <entry><command>hg annotate</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn cat</command></entry> <entry><command>hg cat</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn checkout</command></entry> <entry><command>hg clone</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn cleanup</command></entry> <entry>n/a</entry> <entry>No cleanup needed</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn commit</command></entry> <entry><command>hg commit</command>; <command>hg push</command></entry> <entry><command>hg push</command> publishes after commit</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn copy</command></entry> <entry><command>hg clone</command></entry> <entry>To create a new branch</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn copy</command></entry> <entry><command>hg copy</command></entry> <entry>To copy files or directories</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn delete</command> (<command>svn remove</command>)</entry> <entry><command>hg remove</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn diff</command></entry> <entry><command>hg diff</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn export</command></entry> <entry><command>hg archive</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn help</command></entry> <entry><command>hg help</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn import</command></entry> <entry><command>hg addremove</command>; <command>hg commit</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn info</command></entry> <entry><command>hg parents</command></entry> <entry>Shows what revision is checked out</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn info</command></entry> <entry><command>hg showconfig paths.parent</command></entry> <entry>Shows what URL is checked out</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn list</command></entry> <entry><command>hg manifest</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn log</command></entry> <entry><command>hg log</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn merge</command></entry> <entry><command>hg merge</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn mkdir</command></entry> <entry>n/a</entry> <entry>Mercurial does not track directories</entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn move</command> (<command>svn rename</command>)</entry> <entry><command>hg rename</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn resolved</command></entry> <entry><command>hg resolve -m</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn revert</command></entry> <entry><command>hg revert</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn status</command></entry> <entry><command>hg status</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> <row> <entry><command>svn update</command></entry> <entry><command>hg pull -u</command></entry> <entry></entry> </row> </tbody> </tgroup> </table> </sect2> </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 your current location instead. So to get tree-wide status from <command>hg status</command>, with paths that are relative to your current directory and not the root of the repository, feed the output of <command>hg root</command> into <command>hg status</command>. You can easily do this as follows on a Unix-like system:</para> <screen><prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>hg status `hg root`</userinput></screen> </sect1> </appendix> <!-- local variables: sgml-parent-document: ("00book.xml" "book" "appendix") end: -->