# HG changeset patch # User Bryan O'Sullivan # Date 1234250740 28800 # Node ID 8631da51309bf1c4de7791ebe5e93d6a6e77eb87 # Parent 23dc79421e06b2b0b315245f7e9116752bb1fc78 Slow progress on XML conversion diff -r 23dc79421e06 -r 8631da51309b en/00book.xml --- a/en/00book.xml Mon Feb 09 23:04:31 2009 -0800 +++ b/en/00book.xml Mon Feb 09 23:25:40 2009 -0800 @@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ + @@ -40,4 +41,5 @@ &ch01; &ch02; + &ch12; diff -r 23dc79421e06 -r 8631da51309b en/Makefile --- a/en/Makefile Mon Feb 09 23:04:31 2009 -0800 +++ b/en/Makefile Mon Feb 09 23:25:40 2009 -0800 @@ -31,6 +31,12 @@ wdir-merge.svg \ wdir-pre-branch.svg +xml-src-files := \ + 00book.xml \ + ch01-intro.xml \ + ch02-tour-basic.xml \ + ch12-mq.xml + image-dot := $(filter %.dot,$(image-sources)) image-svg := $(filter %.svg,$(image-sources)) image-png := $(filter %.png,$(image-sources)) @@ -70,6 +76,33 @@ tour \ tour-merge-conflict +xsltproc := xsltproc +xsltproc-opts := --nonet --xinclude --path '$(xml-path)' + +xmllint := xmllint +xmllint-opts := --noout --nonet --valid + +system-xsl-dir := $(firstword $(wildcard \ + /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \ + /usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh \ + )) + +# Bletcherousness. + +ifneq ($(wildcard /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.4-*),) +dtd-dir := $(wildcard /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.4-*) +else +ifneq ($(wildcard /usr/share/xml/docbook/schema/dtd/4.4),) +dtd-dir := $(wildcard /usr/share/xml/docbook/schema/dtd/4.4) +else +$(error Do not know where to look for DocBook XML 4.4 DTD) +endif +endif + +ifeq ($(system-xsl-dir),) +$(error add a suitable directory to system-xsl-dir) +endif + example-prereqs := \ /usr/bin/merge @@ -110,6 +143,18 @@ html: onepage split +../xsl/system-xsl: $(system-xsl-dir) + ln -s $< $@ + +dbhtml: ../xsl/system-xsl $(xml-src-files) valid + xsltproc $(xsltproc-opts) ../xsl/chunk-stylesheet.xsl 00book.xml + +valid: .validated-00book.xml + +.validated-00book.xml: $(xml-src-files) + $(xmllint) --path '$(dtd-dir):$(xml-path)' $(xmllint-opts) $< + touch $@ + onepage: $(htlatex) html/onepage/hgbook.html html/onepage/hgbook.css $(image-html:%=html/onepage/%) html/onepage/%: % diff -r 23dc79421e06 -r 8631da51309b en/book-shortcuts.xml --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/en/book-shortcuts.xml Mon Feb 09 23:25:40 2009 -0800 @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ + + + diff -r 23dc79421e06 -r 8631da51309b en/ch01-intro.xml --- a/en/ch01-intro.xml Mon Feb 09 23:04:31 2009 -0800 +++ b/en/ch01-intro.xml Mon Feb 09 23:25:40 2009 -0800 @@ -1,8 +1,7 @@ - + Introduction - \label{chap:intro} About revision control @@ -50,7 +49,7 @@ fact, a really good revision control tool will even help you to efficiently figure out exactly when a problem was introduced (see section for details). + linkend="sec:undo:bisect"/> for details). It will help you to work simultaneously on, and manage the drift between, multiple versions of your project. diff -r 23dc79421e06 -r 8631da51309b en/ch02-tour-basic.xml --- a/en/ch02-tour-basic.xml Mon Feb 09 23:04:31 2009 -0800 +++ b/en/ch02-tour-basic.xml Mon Feb 09 23:25:40 2009 -0800 @@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ log is purely a summary; it is missing a lot of detail. - Figure provides a + Figure provides a graphical representation of the history of the hello repository, to make it a little easier to see which direction history is @@ -245,15 +245,15 @@ several times in this chapter and the chapter that follows. -
- - XXX - add text - Graphical history of the hello repository - \label{fig:tour-basic:history} -
+ + + + XXX add text + Graphical history of the hello + repository + + Changesets, revisions, and talking to other @@ -342,7 +342,7 @@ <option role="hg-opt-log">--patch</option>) option. This displays the content of a change as a <emphasis>unified diff</emphasis> (if you've never seen a unified diff before, - see section <xref id="sec:mq:patch"/> for an + see section <xref linkend="sec:mq:patch"/> for an overview). <!-- &interaction.tour.log-vp; --></para> </sect2> @@ -489,7 +489,7 @@ <envar role="rc-item-ui">username</envar> entry, that will be used next. To see what the contents of this file should look like, refer to section <xref - id="sec:tour-basic:username"/> + linkend="sec:tour-basic:username"/> below.</para></listitem> <listitem><para>If you have set the <envar>EMAIL</envar> environment variable, this will be used @@ -499,159 +499,172 @@ username from these components. Since this often results in a username that is not very useful, it will print a warning if it has to do - this.</para></listitem></orderedlist> - <listitem><para>If all of these mechanisms fail, Mercurial will + this.</para></listitem> + </orderedlist> + <para>If all of these mechanisms fail, Mercurial will fail, printing an error message. In this case, it will not let you commit until you set up a - username.</para></listitem> - <listitem><para>You should think of the <envar>HGUSER</envar> - environment variable and the <option - role="hg-opt-commit">-u</option> option to the <command - role="hg-cmd">hg commit</command> command as ways to - <emphasis>override</emphasis> Mercurial's default selection - of username. For normal use, the simplest and most robust - way to set a username for yourself is by creating a - <filename role="special">.hgrc</filename> file; see below - for details.</para></listitem> - <sect3> + username.</para> + <para>You should think of the <envar>HGUSER</envar> environment + variable and the <option role="hg-opt-commit">-u</option> + option to the <command role="hg-cmd">hg commit</command> + command as ways to <emphasis>override</emphasis> Mercurial's + default selection of username. For normal use, the simplest + and most robust way to set a username for yourself is by + creating a <filename role="special">.hgrc</filename> file; see + below for details.</para> + <sect3 id="sec:tour-basic:username"> <title>Creating a Mercurial configuration file - \label{sec:tour-basic:username} - To set a user name, use your favourite editor + + To set a user name, use your favourite editor to create a file called .hgrc in your home directory. Mercurial will use this file to look up your personalised configuration settings. The initial contents of your .hgrc should look like - this. - # This is a Mercurial configuration file. - [ui] username = Firstname Lastname - <email.address@domain.net> - The [ui] - line begins a section of the config - file, so you can read the username = - ... line as meaning set the - value of the username item in the - ui section. A section - continues until a new section begins, or the end of the - file. Mercurial ignores empty lines and treats any text - from # to the end of a - line as a comment. + this.
+ # This is a Mercurial configuration file. +[ui] username = Firstname Lastname +<email.address@domain.net> + + The [ui] line begins a + section of the config file, so you can + read the username = ... + line as meaning set the value of the + username item in the + ui section. A section continues + until a new section begins, or the end of the file. + Mercurial ignores empty lines and treats any text from + # to the end of a line as + a comment. + Choosing a user name - You can use any text you like as the value of + You can use any text you like as the value of the username 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. + in the example above. - Mercurial's built-in web server obfuscates + Mercurial's built-in web server obfuscates email addresses, to make it more difficult for the email harvesting tools that spammers use. This reduces the likelihood that you'll start receiving more junk email if you publish a Mercurial repository on the - web. + web. Writing a commit message - When we commit a change, Mercurial drops us into + When we commit a change, Mercurial drops us into a text editor, to enter a message that will describe the modifications we've made in this changeset. This is called the commit message. It will be a record for readers of what we did and why, and it will be printed by hg log after - we've finished committing. - The editor that the hg + we've finished committing. + + + + The editor that the hg commit command drops us into will contain an empty line, followed by a number of lines starting with - HG:. - empty line HG: changed - hello.c - Mercurial ignores the lines that start with + HG:. + + XXX fix this XXX + + Mercurial ignores the lines that start with HG:; it uses them only to tell us which files it's recording changes to. Modifying or - deleting these lines has no effect. + deleting these lines has no effect. Writing a good commit message - Since hg log + Since hg log only prints the first line of a commit message by default, it's best to write a commit message whose first line stands alone. Here's a real example of a commit message that doesn't follow this guideline, and hence has a summary that is not - readable. - changeset: 73:584af0e231be user: Censored - Person <censored.person@example.org> date: Tue Sep - 26 21:37:07 2006 -0700 summary: include - buildmeister/commondefs. Add an exports and - install + readable. - As far as the remainder of the contents of the + +changeset: 73:584af0e231be +user: Censored Person <censored.person@example.org> +date: Tue Sep 26 21:37:07 2006 -0700 +summary: include buildmeister/commondefs. Add exports. + + As far as the remainder of the contents of the commit message are concerned, there are no hard-and-fast rules. Mercurial itself doesn't interpret or care about the contents of the commit message, though your project may have policies that dictate a certain kind of - formatting. - My personal preference is for short, but + formatting. + My personal preference is for short, but informative, commit messages that tell me something that I can't figure out with a quick glance at the output of hg log - --patch. + --patch. Aborting a commit - If you decide that you don't want to commit + If you decide that you don't want to commit while in the middle of editing a commit message, simply exit from your editor without saving the file that it's editing. This will cause nothing to happen to either the repository - or the working directory. - If we run the hg + or the working directory. + If we run the hg commit command without any arguments, it records all of the changes we've made, as reported by hg status and hg diff. + role="hg-cmd">hg diff. Admiring our new handiwork - Once we've finished the commit, we can use the + Once we've finished the commit, we can use the hg tip command to display the changeset we just created. This command produces output that is identical to hg log, but it only displays the newest revision in - the repository. We refer to + the repository. + + + + We refer to the newest revision in the repository as the tip revision, - or simply the tip. + or simply the tip.
+ Sharing changes - We mentioned earlier that repositories in + We mentioned earlier that repositories in Mercurial are self-contained. This means that the changeset we just created exists only in our my-hello repository. Let's look at a few ways that we can propagate this change into - other repositories. - + other repositories. + + Pulling changes from another repository - \label{sec:tour:pull} - To get started, let's clone our original + To get started, let's clone our original hello repository, which does not contain the change we just committed. We'll call our temporary repository hello-pull. - We'll use the hg + class="directory">hello-pull. + + + + We'll use the hg pull command to bring changes from my-hello into hello-pull. However, blindly @@ -660,38 +673,46 @@ role="hg-cmd">hg incoming command to tell us what changes the hg pull command would pull into the repository, - without actually pulling the changes in. (Of course, someone could + without actually pulling the changes in. + + + + (Of course, someone could cause more changesets to appear in the repository that we ran hg incoming in, before we get a chance to hg pull the changes, so that we could end up pulling changes that we - didn't expect.) - Bringing changes into a repository is a simple + didn't expect.) + + Bringing changes into a repository is a simple matter of running the hg pull command, and telling it which repository to - pull from. As you can see + pull from. + + + + As you can see from the before-and-after output of hg tip, we have successfully pulled changes into our repository. There remains one step before we can see these changes in the working - directory. + directory. Updating the working directory - We have so far glossed over the relationship + We have so far glossed over the relationship between a repository and its working directory. The hg pull command that we ran - in section brought changes into + in section brought changes into the repository, but if we check, there's no sign of those changes in the working directory. This is because hg pull does not (by default) touch the working directory. Instead, we use the hg update command to do this. - It might seem a bit strange that + It might seem a bit strange that hg pull doesn't update the working directory automatically. There's actually a good reason for this: you can use hg update @@ -701,81 +722,103 @@ old revision---to hunt down the origin of a bug, say---and ran a hg pull which automatically updated the working directory to a new - revision, you might not be terribly happy. - However, since pull-then-update is such a common + revision, you might not be terribly happy. + However, since pull-then-update is such a common thing to do, Mercurial lets you combine the two by passing the option to hg - pull. - hg pull - -u - If you look back at the output of . + + If you look back at the output of hg pull in section when we ran it without , you can see that it printed a helpful reminder that we'd have to take an explicit step to update the working - directory: - (run 'hg update' to get a working - copy) + directory: + + - To find out what revision the working directory + To find out what revision the working directory is at, use the hg parents - command. If you look - back at figure , you'll + command. + + + + If you look + back at figure , you'll see arrows connecting each changeset. The node that the arrow leads from in each case is a parent, and the node that the arrow leads to is its child. The working directory has a parent in just the same way; this is the changeset that the working directory currently - contains. - To update the working directory to a particular + contains. + To update the working directory to a particular revision, give a revision number or changeset ID to the hg update command. If you omit an explicit revision, hg update will update to the tip revision, as shown by the second call to hg update in the example - above. + above. + Pushing changes to another repository - Mercurial lets us push changes to another + Mercurial lets us push changes to another repository, from the repository we're currently visiting. As with the example of hg pull above, we'll create a temporary repository - to push our changes into. The hg outgoing command + to push our changes into. + + + + The hg outgoing command tells us what changes would be pushed into another - repository. And the + repository. + + + + And the hg push command does the - actual push. As with + actual push. + + + + As with hg pull, the hg push command does not update the working directory in the repository that it's pushing changes into. (Unlike hg pull, hg push does not provide a -u option that updates - the other repository's working directory.) - What happens if we try to pull or push changes + the other repository's working directory.) + + What happens if we try to pull or push changes and the receiving repository already has those changes? - Nothing too exciting. + Nothing too exciting. + + Sharing changes over a network - The commands we have covered in the previous few + The commands we have covered in the previous few sections are not limited to working with local repositories. Each works in exactly the same fashion over a network - connection; simply pass in a URL instead of a local path. - In this example, we + connection; simply pass in a URL instead of a local + path. + + + + In this example, we can see what changes we could push to the remote repository, but the repository is understandably not set up to let - anonymous users push to it. + anonymous users push to it. + +
diff -r 23dc79421e06 -r 8631da51309b en/ch12-mq.xml --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/en/ch12-mq.xml Mon Feb 09 23:25:40 2009 -0800 @@ -0,0 +1,1324 @@ + + + + Managing change with Mercurial Queues + + + The patch management problem + + Here is a common scenario: you need to install a software + package from source, but you find a bug that you must fix in the + source before you can start using the package. You make your + changes, forget about the package for a while, and a few months + later you need to upgrade to a newer version of the package. If + the newer version of the package still has the bug, you must + extract your fix from the older source tree and apply it against + the newer version. This is a tedious task, and it's easy to + make mistakes. + + This is a simple case of the patch management + problem. You have an upstream source tree that + you can't change; you need to make some local changes on top of + the upstream tree; and you'd like to be able to keep those + changes separate, so that you can apply them to newer versions + of the upstream source. + + The patch management problem arises in many situations. + Probably the most visible is that a user of an open source + software project will contribute a bug fix or new feature to the + project's maintainers in the form of a patch. + + Distributors of operating systems that include open source + software often need to make changes to the packages they + distribute so that they will build properly in their + environments. + + When you have few changes to maintain, it is easy to manage + a single patch using the standard diff and + patch programs (see section for a discussion of these tools). + Once the number of changes grows, it starts to make sense to + maintain patches as discrete chunks of work, so + that for example a single patch will contain only one bug fix + (the patch might modify several files, but it's doing + only one thing), and you may have a number of + such patches for different bugs you need fixed and local changes + you require. In this situation, if you submit a bug fix patch + to the upstream maintainers of a package and they include your + fix in a subsequent release, you can simply drop that single + patch when you're updating to the newer release. + + Maintaining a single patch against an upstream tree is a + little tedious and error-prone, but not difficult. However, the + complexity of the problem grows rapidly as the number of patches + you have to maintain increases. With more than a tiny number of + patches in hand, understanding which ones you have applied and + maintaining them moves from messy to overwhelming. + + Fortunately, Mercurial includes a powerful extension, + Mercurial Queues (or simply MQ), that massively + simplifies the patch management problem. + + + + The prehistory of Mercurial Queues + + During the late 1990s, several Linux kernel developers + started to maintain patch series that modified + the behaviour of the Linux kernel. Some of these series were + focused on stability, some on feature coverage, and others were + more speculative. + + The sizes of these patch series grew rapidly. In 2002, + Andrew Morton published some shell scripts he had been using to + automate the task of managing his patch queues. Andrew was + successfully using these scripts to manage hundreds (sometimes + thousands) of patches on top of the Linux kernel. + + + A patchwork quilt + + In early 2003, Andreas Gruenbacher and Martin Quinson + borrowed the approach of Andrew's scripts and published a tool + called patchwork quilt + web:quilt, or simply quilt + (see gruenbacher:2005 for a paper + describing it). Because quilt substantially automated patch + management, it rapidly gained a large following among open + source software developers. + + Quilt manages a stack of patches on + top of a directory tree. To begin, you tell quilt to manage a + directory tree, and tell it which files you want to manage; it + stores away the names and contents of those files. To fix a + bug, you create a new patch (using a single command), edit the + files you need to fix, then refresh the + patch. + + The refresh step causes quilt to scan the directory tree; + it updates the patch with all of the changes you have made. + You can create another patch on top of the first, which will + track the changes required to modify the tree from tree + with one patch applied to tree with two + patches applied. + + You can change which patches are + applied to the tree. If you pop a patch, the + changes made by that patch will vanish from the directory + tree. Quilt remembers which patches you have popped, though, + so you can push a popped patch again, and the + directory tree will be restored to contain the modifications + in the patch. Most importantly, you can run the + refresh command at any time, and the topmost + applied patch will be updated. This means that you can, at + any time, change both which patches are applied and what + modifications those patches make. + + Quilt knows nothing about revision control tools, so it + works equally well on top of an unpacked tarball or a + Subversion working copy. + + + + From patchwork quilt to Mercurial Queues + + In mid-2005, Chris Mason took the features of quilt and + wrote an extension that he called Mercurial Queues, which + added quilt-like behaviour to Mercurial. + + The key difference between quilt and MQ is that quilt + knows nothing about revision control systems, while MQ is + integrated into Mercurial. Each patch + that you push is represented as a Mercurial changeset. Pop a + patch, and the changeset goes away. + + Because quilt does not care about revision control tools, + it is still a tremendously useful piece of software to know + about for situations where you cannot use Mercurial and + MQ. + + + + + The huge advantage of MQ + + I cannot overstate the value that MQ offers through the + unification of patches and revision control. + + A major reason that patches have persisted in the free + software and open source world&emdash;in spite of the availability of + increasingly capable revision control tools over the years&emdash;is + the agility they offer. + + Traditional revision control tools make a permanent, + irreversible record of everything that you do. While this has + great value, it's also somewhat stifling. If you want to + perform a wild-eyed experiment, you have to be careful in how + you go about it, or you risk leaving unneeded&emdash;or worse, + misleading or destabilising&emdash;traces of your missteps and errors + in the permanent revision record. + + By contrast, MQ's marriage of distributed revision control + with patches makes it much easier to isolate your work. Your + patches live on top of normal revision history, and you can make + them disappear or reappear at will. If you don't like a patch, + you can drop it. If a patch isn't quite as you want it to be, + simply fix it&emdash;as many times as you need to, until you have + refined it into the form you desire. + + As an example, the integration of patches with revision + control makes understanding patches and debugging their + effects&emdash;and their interplay with the code they're based + on&emdash;enormously easier. Since every applied + patch has an associated changeset, you can use hg log to see which changesets and + patches affected a file. You can use the bisect command to binary-search + through all changesets and applied patches to see where a bug + got introduced or fixed. You can use the hg annotate command to see which + changeset or patch modified a particular line of a source file. + And so on. + + + + + Understanding patches + + Because MQ doesn't hide its patch-oriented nature, it is + helpful to understand what patches are, and a little about the + tools that work with them. + + The traditional Unix diff command + compares two files, and prints a list of differences between + them. The patch command understands these + differences as modifications to make to a + file. Take a look below for a simple example of these commands + in action. + + + + The type of file that diff generates (and + patch takes as input) is called a + patch or a diff; there is no + difference between a patch and a diff. (We'll use the term + patch, since it's more commonly used.) + + A patch file can start with arbitrary text; the + patch command ignores this text, but MQ uses + it as the commit message when creating changesets. To find the + beginning of the patch content, patch + searches for the first line that starts with the string + diff -. + + MQ works with unified diffs + (patch can accept several other diff formats, + but MQ doesn't). A unified diff contains two kinds of header. + The file header describes the file being + modified; it contains the name of the file to modify. When + patch sees a new file header, it looks for a + file with that name to start modifying. + + After the file header comes a series of + hunks. Each hunk starts with a header; + this identifies the range of line numbers within the file that + the hunk should modify. Following the header, a hunk starts and + ends with a few (usually three) lines of text from the + unmodified file; these are called the + context for the hunk. If there's only a + small amount of context between successive hunks, + diff doesn't print a new hunk header; it just + runs the hunks together, with a few lines of context between + modifications. + + Each line of context begins with a space character. Within + the hunk, a line that begins with + - means remove this + line, while a line that begins with + + means insert this + line. For example, a line that is modified is + represented by one deletion and one insertion. + + We will return to some of the more subtle aspects of patches + later (in section ), but you + should have enough information now to use MQ. + + + + Getting started with Mercurial Queues + + Because MQ is implemented as an extension, you must + explicitly enable before you can use it. (You don't need to + download anything; MQ ships with the standard Mercurial + distribution.) To enable MQ, edit your + /.hgrc file, and add the lines below. + + [extensions] hgext.mq = + + Once the extension is enabled, it will make a number of new + commands available. To verify that the extension is working, + you can use hg help to see if + the hg qinit command is now + available. + + + + You can use MQ with any Mercurial + repository, and its commands only operate within that + repository. To get started, simply prepare the repository using + the hg qinit command. This + command creates an empty directory called .hg/patches, where + MQ will keep its metadata. As with many Mercurial commands, the + hg qinit command prints nothing + if it succeeds. + + + + + Creating a new patch + + To begin work on a new patch, use the hg qnew command. This command takes + one argument, the name of the patch to create. MQ will use + this as the name of an actual file in the .hg/patches + directory, as you can see in figure . + + Also newly present in the .hg/patches directory are two + other files, series and + status. The series file lists all of the + patches that MQ knows about for this repository, with one + patch per line. Mercurial uses the status file for internal + book-keeping; it tracks all of the patches that MQ has + applied in this repository. + + + You may sometimes want to edit the series file by hand; for + example, to change the sequence in which some patches are + applied. However, manually editing the status file is almost always a + bad idea, as it's easy to corrupt MQ's idea of what is + happening. + + + Once you have created your new patch, you can edit files + in the working directory as you usually would. All of the + normal Mercurial commands, such as hg + diff and hg + annotate, work exactly as they did before. + + + + Refreshing a patch + + When you reach a point where you want to save your work, + use the hg qrefresh + command to update the patch you are working on. This command + folds the changes you have made in the working directory into + your patch, and updates its corresponding changeset to contain + those changes. + + + + You can run hg hg + qrefresh as often as you like, so it's a good way + to checkpoint your work. Refresh your patch at + an opportune time; try an experiment; and if the experiment + doesn't work out, hg revert + your modifications back to the last time you refreshed. + + + + + + Stacking and tracking patches + + Once you have finished working on a patch, or need to work + on another, you can use the hg hg + qnew command again to create a new patch. + Mercurial will apply this patch on top of your existing patch. + See figure for an example. + Notice that the patch contains the changes in our prior patch + as part of its context (you can see this more clearly in the + output of hg + annotate). + + + + So far, with the exception of hg qnew and hg qrefresh, we've been careful to + only use regular Mercurial commands. However, MQ provides + many commands that are easier to use when you are thinking + about patches, as illustrated in figure : + + + The hg qseries command lists every + patch that MQ knows about in this repository, from oldest + to newest (most recently + created). + The hg qapplied command lists every + patch that MQ has applied in this + repository, again from oldest to newest (most recently + applied). + + + + + + Manipulating the patch stack + + The previous discussion implied that there must be a + difference between known and + applied patches, and there is. MQ can manage a + patch without it being applied in the repository. + + An applied patch has a corresponding + changeset in the repository, and the effects of the patch and + changeset are visible in the working directory. You can undo + the application of a patch using the hg qpop command. MQ still + knows about, or manages, a popped patch, + but the patch no longer has a corresponding changeset in the + repository, and the working directory does not contain the + changes made by the patch. Figure illustrates the difference between + applied and tracked patches. + + + + + XXX add text + Applied and unapplied patches in the MQ patch + stack + + + + You can reapply an unapplied, or popped, patch using the + hg qpush command. This + creates a new changeset to correspond to the patch, and the + patch's changes once again become present in the working + directory. See figure for + examples of hg qpop and + hg qpush in action. Notice + that once we have popped a patch or two patches, the output of + hg qseries remains the same, + while that of hg qapplied has + changed. + + + + + + Pushing and popping many patches + + While hg qpush and + hg qpop each operate on a + single patch at a time by default, you can push and pop many + patches in one go. The option to + hg qpush causes it to push + all unapplied patches, while the option to hg qpop causes it to pop all applied + patches. (For some more ways to push and pop many patches, + see section below.) + + + + + + Safety checks, and overriding them + + Several MQ commands check the working directory before + they do anything, and fail if they find any modifications. + They do this to ensure that you won't lose any changes that + you have made, but not yet incorporated into a patch. Figure + illustrates this; the hg qnew command will not create a + new patch if there are outstanding changes, caused in this + case by the hg add of + file3. + + + + Commands that check the working directory all take an + I know what I'm doing option, which is always + named . The exact meaning of + depends on the command. For example, + hg qnew will + incorporate any outstanding changes into the new patch it + creates, but hg qpop will + revert modifications to any files affected by the patch that + it is popping. Be sure to read the documentation for a + command's option before you use it! + + + + Working on several patches at once + + The hg qrefresh command + always refreshes the topmost applied + patch. This means that you can suspend work on one patch (by + refreshing it), pop or push to make a different patch the top, + and work on that patch for a + while. + + Here's an example that illustrates how you can use this + ability. Let's say you're developing a new feature as two + patches. The first is a change to the core of your software, + and the second&emdash;layered on top of the first&emdash;changes the + user interface to use the code you just added to the core. If + you notice a bug in the core while you're working on the UI + patch, it's easy to fix the core. Simply hg qrefresh the UI patch to save + your in-progress changes, and hg qpop down to the core patch. Fix + the core bug, hg qrefresh the + core patch, and hg qpush back + to the UI patch to continue where you left off. + + + + + + More about patches + + MQ uses the GNU patch command to apply + patches, so it's helpful to know a few more detailed aspects of + how patch works, and about patches + themselves. + + + The strip count + + If you look at the file headers in a patch, you will + notice that the pathnames usually have an extra component on + the front that isn't present in the actual path name. This is + a holdover from the way that people used to generate patches + (people still do this, but it's somewhat rare with modern + revision control tools). + + Alice would unpack a tarball, edit her files, then decide + that she wanted to create a patch. So she'd rename her + working directory, unpack the tarball again (hence the need + for the rename), and use the and options to + diff to recursively generate a patch + between the unmodified directory and the modified one. The + result would be that the name of the unmodified directory + would be at the front of the left-hand path in every file + header, and the name of the modified directory would be at the + front of the right-hand path. + + Since someone receiving a patch from the Alices of the net + would be unlikely to have unmodified and modified directories + with exactly the same names, the patch + command has a option + that indicates the number of leading path name components to + strip when trying to apply a patch. This number is called the + strip count. + + An option of -p1 means + use a strip count of one. If + patch sees a file name + foo/bar/baz in a file header, it will + strip foo and try to patch a file named + bar/baz. (Strictly speaking, the strip + count refers to the number of path + separators (and the components that go with them + ) to strip. A strip count of one will turn + foo/bar into bar, + but /foo/bar (notice the extra leading + slash) into foo/bar.) + + The standard strip count for patches is + one; almost all patches contain one leading path name + component that needs to be stripped. Mercurial's hg diff command generates path names + in this form, and the hg + import command and MQ expect patches to have a + strip count of one. + + If you receive a patch from someone that you want to add + to your patch queue, and the patch needs a strip count other + than one, you cannot just hg qimport the patch, because + hg qimport does not yet have + a -p option (see issue + 311). Your best bet is to hg qnew a patch of your own, then + use patch -pN to apply their patch, + followed by hg addremove to + pick up any files added or removed by the patch, followed by + hg qrefresh. This complexity + may become unnecessary; see issue + 311 for details. + + + Strategies for applying a patch + + When patch applies a hunk, it tries a + handful of successively less accurate strategies to try to + make the hunk apply. This falling-back technique often makes + it possible to take a patch that was generated against an old + version of a file, and apply it against a newer version of + that file. + + First, patch tries an exact match, + where the line numbers, the context, and the text to be + modified must apply exactly. If it cannot make an exact + match, it tries to find an exact match for the context, + without honouring the line numbering information. If this + succeeds, it prints a line of output saying that the hunk was + applied, but at some offset from the + original line number. + + If a context-only match fails, patch + removes the first and last lines of the context, and tries a + reduced context-only match. If the hunk + with reduced context succeeds, it prints a message saying that + it applied the hunk with a fuzz factor + (the number after the fuzz factor indicates how many lines of + context patch had to trim before the patch + applied). + + When neither of these techniques works, + patch prints a message saying that the hunk + in question was rejected. It saves rejected hunks (also + simply called rejects) to a file with the same + name, and an added .rej + extension. It also saves an unmodified copy of the file with + a .orig extension; the + copy of the file without any extensions will contain any + changes made by hunks that did apply + cleanly. If you have a patch that modifies + foo with six hunks, and one of them fails + to apply, you will have: an unmodified + foo.orig, a foo.rej + containing one hunk, and foo, containing + the changes made by the five successful hunks. + + + + Some quirks of patch representation + + There are a few useful things to know about how + patch works with files. + + + This should already be obvious, but + patch cannot handle binary + files. + + Neither does it care about the executable bit; + it creates new files as readable, but not + executable. + + patch treats the removal of + a file as a diff between the file to be removed and the + empty file. So your idea of I deleted this + file looks like every line of this file + was deleted in a patch. + + It treats the addition of a file as a diff + between the empty file and the file to be added. So in a + patch, your idea of I added this file looks + like every line of this file was + added. + + It treats a renamed file as the removal of the + old name, and the addition of the new name. This means + that renamed files have a big footprint in patches. (Note + also that Mercurial does not currently try to infer when + files have been renamed or copied in a + patch.) + + patch cannot represent + empty files, so you cannot use a patch to represent the + notion I added this empty file to the + tree. + + + + + Beware the fuzz + + While applying a hunk at an offset, or with a fuzz factor, + will often be completely successful, these inexact techniques + naturally leave open the possibility of corrupting the patched + file. The most common cases typically involve applying a + patch twice, or at an incorrect location in the file. If + patch or hg qpush ever mentions an offset or + fuzz factor, you should make sure that the modified files are + correct afterwards. + + It's often a good idea to refresh a patch that has applied + with an offset or fuzz factor; refreshing the patch generates + new context information that will make it apply cleanly. I + say often, not always, because + sometimes refreshing a patch will make it fail to apply + against a different revision of the underlying files. In some + cases, such as when you're maintaining a patch that must sit + on top of multiple versions of a source tree, it's acceptable + to have a patch apply with some fuzz, provided you've verified + the results of the patching process in such cases. + + + + Handling rejection + + If hg qpush fails to + apply a patch, it will print an error message and exit. If it + has left .rej files + behind, it is usually best to fix up the rejected hunks before + you push more patches or do any further work. + + If your patch used to apply cleanly, + and no longer does because you've changed the underlying code + that your patches are based on, Mercurial Queues can help; see + section for details. + + Unfortunately, there aren't any great techniques for + dealing with rejected hunks. Most often, you'll need to view + the .rej file and edit the + target file, applying the rejected hunks by hand. + + If you're feeling adventurous, Neil Brown, a Linux kernel + hacker, wrote a tool called wiggle + web:wiggle, which is more vigorous than + patch in its attempts to make a patch + apply. + + Another Linux kernel hacker, Chris Mason (the author of + Mercurial Queues), wrote a similar tool called + mpatch web:mpatch, + which takes a simple approach to automating the application of + hunks rejected by patch. The + mpatch command can help with four common + reasons that a hunk may be rejected: + + + The context in the middle of a hunk has + changed. + + A hunk is missing some context at the + beginning or end. + + A large hunk might apply better&emdash;either + entirely or in part&emdash;if it was broken up into smaller + hunks. + + A hunk removes lines with slightly different + content than those currently present in the + file. + + + If you use wiggle or + mpatch, you should be doubly careful to + check your results when you're done. In fact, + mpatch enforces this method of + double-checking the tool's output, by automatically dropping + you into a merge program when it has done its job, so that you + can verify its work and finish off any remaining + merges. + + + + + Getting the best performance out of MQ + + MQ is very efficient at handling a large number of patches. + I ran some performance experiments in mid-2006 for a talk that I + gave at the 2006 EuroPython conference + web:europython. I used as my data set the + Linux 2.6.17-mm1 patch series, which consists of 1,738 patches. + I applied these on top of a Linux kernel repository containing + all 27,472 revisions between Linux 2.6.12-rc2 and Linux + 2.6.17. + + On my old, slow laptop, I was able to hg qpush all + 1,738 patches in 3.5 minutes, and hg qpop + + them all in 30 seconds. (On a newer laptop, the time to push + all patches dropped to two minutes.) I could hg qrefresh one of the biggest patches + (which made 22,779 lines of changes to 287 files) in 6.6 + seconds. + + Clearly, MQ is well suited to working in large trees, but + there are a few tricks you can use to get the best performance + of it. + + First of all, try to batch operations + together. Every time you run hg qpush or hg qpop, these commands scan the + working directory once to make sure you haven't made some + changes and then forgotten to run hg qrefresh. On a small tree, the + time that this scan takes is unnoticeable. However, on a + medium-sized tree (containing tens of thousands of files), it + can take a second or more. + + The hg qpush and hg qpop commands allow you to push and + pop multiple patches at a time. You can identify the + destination patch that you want to end up at. + When you hg qpush with a + destination specified, it will push patches until that patch is + at the top of the applied stack. When you hg qpop to a destination, MQ will pop + patches until the destination patch is at the top. + + You can identify a destination patch using either the name + of the patch, or by number. If you use numeric addressing, + patches are counted from zero; this means that the first patch + is zero, the second is one, and so on. + + + + + Updating your patches when the underlying code + changes + + It's common to have a stack of patches on top of an + underlying repository that you don't modify directly. If you're + working on changes to third-party code, or on a feature that is + taking longer to develop than the rate of change of the code + beneath, you will often need to sync up with the underlying + code, and fix up any hunks in your patches that no longer apply. + This is called rebasing your patch + series. + + The simplest way to do this is to hg + qpop your + patches, then hg pull changes + into the underlying repository, and finally hg qpush your + patches again. MQ will stop pushing any time it runs across a + patch that fails to apply during conflicts, allowing you to fix + your conflicts, hg qrefresh the + affected patch, and continue pushing until you have fixed your + entire stack. + + This approach is easy to use and works well if you don't + expect changes to the underlying code to affect how well your + patches apply. If your patch stack touches code that is modified + frequently or invasively in the underlying repository, however, + fixing up rejected hunks by hand quickly becomes + tiresome. + + It's possible to partially automate the rebasing process. If + your patches apply cleanly against some revision of the + underlying repo, MQ can use this information to help you to + resolve conflicts between your patches and a different + revision. + + The process is a little involved. + + To begin, hg qpush + -a all of your patches on top of the revision + where you know that they apply cleanly. + + Save a backup copy of your patch directory using + hg qsave . + This prints the name of the directory that it has saved the + patches in. It will save the patches to a directory called + .hg/patches.N, where + N is a small integer. It also commits a + save changeset on top of your applied + patches; this is for internal book-keeping, and records the + states of the series and + status + files. + + + Use hg pull to bring + new changes into the underlying repository. (Don't run + hg pull -u; see below for + why.) + + Update to the new tip revision, using hg update to override + the patches you have pushed. + + Merge all patches using + \hgcmdargs{qpush}{ }. The option to + hg qpush tells MQ to + perform a three-way merge if the patch fails to + apply. + + + During the hg qpush , each + patch in the series file is + applied normally. If a patch applies with fuzz or rejects, MQ + looks at the queue you hg qsaved, and performs a three-way + merge with the corresponding changeset. This merge uses + Mercurial's normal merge machinery, so it may pop up a GUI merge + tool to help you to resolve problems. + + When you finish resolving the effects of a patch, MQ + refreshes your patch based on the result of the merge. + + At the end of this process, your repository will have one + extra head from the old patch queue, and a copy of the old patch + queue will be in .hg/patches.N. You can remove the + extra head using hg qpop + patches.N or hg + strip. You can delete .hg/patches.N once you are sure + that you no longer need it as a backup. + + + + Identifying patches + + MQ commands that work with patches let you refer to a patch + either by using its name or by a number. By name is obvious + enough; pass the name foo.patch to hg qpush, for example, and it will + push patches until foo.patch is + applied. + + As a shortcut, you can refer to a patch using both a name + and a numeric offset; foo.patch-2 means + two patches before foo.patch, + while bar.patch+4 means four patches + after bar.patch. + + Referring to a patch by index isn't much different. The + first patch printed in the output of hg qseries is patch zero (yes, it's + one of those start-at-zero counting systems); the second is + patch one; and so on. + + MQ also makes it easy to work with patches when you are + using normal Mercurial commands. Every command that accepts a + changeset ID will also accept the name of an applied patch. MQ + augments the tags normally in the repository with an eponymous + one for each applied patch. In addition, the special tags + \index{tags!special tag + names!qbase}qbase and + \index{tags!special tag + names!qtip}qtip identify + the bottom-most and topmost applied patches, + respectively. + + These additions to Mercurial's normal tagging capabilities + make dealing with patches even more of a breeze. + + Want to patchbomb a mailing list with your + latest series of changes? + + hg email qbase:qtip + + (Don't know what patchbombing + is? See section .) + + Need to see all of the patches since + foo.patch that have touched files in a + subdirectory of your tree? + + hg log -r foo.patch:qtip subdir + + + + Because MQ makes the names of patches available to the rest + of Mercurial through its normal internal tag machinery, you + don't need to type in the entire name of a patch when you want + to identify it by name. + + + + Another nice consequence of representing patch names as tags + is that when you run the hg log + command, it will display a patch's name as a tag, simply as part + of its normal output. This makes it easy to visually + distinguish applied patches from underlying + normal revisions. Figure shows a few normal Mercurial commands in + use with applied patches. + + + + Useful things to know about + + There are a number of aspects of MQ usage that don't fit + tidily into sections of their own, but that are good to know. + Here they are, in one place. + + + Normally, when you hg qpop a patch and hg qpush it again, the changeset + that represents the patch after the pop/push will have a + different identity than the changeset + that represented the hash beforehand. See section for information as to why + this is. + + It's not a good idea to hg merge changes from another + branch with a patch changeset, at least if you want to + maintain the patchiness of that changeset and + changesets below it on the patch stack. If you try to do + this, it will appear to succeed, but MQ will become + confused. + + + + + + Managing patches in a repository + + Because MQ's .hg/patches directory resides + outside a Mercurial repository's working directory, the + underlying Mercurial repository knows nothing + about the management or presence of patches. + + This presents the interesting possibility of managing the + contents of the patch directory as a Mercurial repository in its + own right. This can be a useful way to work. For example, you + can work on a patch for a while, hg qrefresh it, then hg commit the current state of the + patch. This lets you roll back to that version + of the patch later on. + + You can then share different versions of the same patch + stack among multiple underlying repositories. I use this when I + am developing a Linux kernel feature. I have a pristine copy of + my kernel sources for each of several CPU architectures, and a + cloned repository under each that contains the patches I am + working on. When I want to test a change on a different + architecture, I push my current patches to the patch repository + associated with that kernel tree, pop and push all of my + patches, and build and test that kernel. + + Managing patches in a repository makes it possible for + multiple developers to work on the same patch series without + colliding with each other, all on top of an underlying source + base that they may or may not control. + + + MQ support for patch repositories + + MQ helps you to work with the .hg/patches directory as a + repository; when you prepare a repository for working with + patches using hg qinit, you + can pass the option to create + the .hg/patches directory as a + Mercurial repository. + + + If you forget to use the option, you can + simply go into the .hg/patches directory at any + time and run hg init. Don't + forget to add an entry for the status file to the .hgignore file, though + + (hg qinit + does this for you automatically); you + really don't want to manage the + status file. + + + As a convenience, if MQ notices that the .hg/patches directory is a + repository, it will automatically hg + add every patch that you create and import. + + MQ provides a shortcut command, hg qcommit, that runs hg commit in the .hg/patches + directory. This saves some bothersome typing. + + Finally, as a convenience to manage the patch directory, + you can define the alias mq on Unix + systems. For example, on Linux systems using the + bash shell, you can include the following + snippet in your + /.bashrc. + + + alias mq=`hg -R $(hg root)/.hg/patches' + + + You can then issue commands of the form mq + pull from the main repository. + + + + A few things to watch out for + + MQ's support for working with a repository full of patches + is limited in a few small respects. + + MQ cannot automatically detect changes that you make to + the patch directory. If you hg + pull, manually edit, or hg + update changes to patches or the series file, you will have to + hg qpop and + then hg qpush in + the underlying repository to see those changes show up there. + If you forget to do this, you can confuse MQ's idea of which + patches are applied. + + + + + Third party tools for working with patches + + Once you've been working with patches for a while, you'll + find yourself hungry for tools that will help you to understand + and manipulate the patches you're dealing with. + + The diffstat command + web:diffstat generates a histogram of the + modifications made to each file in a patch. It provides a good + way to get a sense of a patch&emdash;which files it + affects, and how much change it introduces to each file and as a + whole. (I find that it's a good idea to use + diffstat's option as a matter of + course, as otherwise it will try to do clever things with + prefixes of file names that inevitably confuse at least + me.) + + + + The patchutils package + web:patchutils is invaluable. It provides a + set of small utilities that follow the Unix + philosophy; each does one useful thing with a patch. + The patchutils command I use + most is filterdiff, which extracts subsets + from a patch file. For example, given a patch that modifies + hundreds of files across dozens of directories, a single + invocation of filterdiff can generate a + smaller patch that only touches files whose names match a + particular glob pattern. See section for another + example. + + + + Good ways to work with patches + + Whether you are working on a patch series to submit to a + free software or open source project, or a series that you + intend to treat as a sequence of regular changesets when you're + done, you can use some simple techniques to keep your work well + organised. + + Give your patches descriptive names. A good name for a + patch might be rework-device-alloc.patch, + because it will immediately give you a hint what the purpose of + the patch is. Long names shouldn't be a problem; you won't be + typing the names often, but you will be + running commands like hg qapplied and hg qtop over and over. Good naming + becomes especially important when you have a number of patches + to work with, or if you are juggling a number of different tasks + and your patches only get a fraction of your attention. + + Be aware of what patch you're working on. Use the hg qtop command and skim over the text + of your patches frequently&emdash;for example, using hg tip )&emdash;to be sure of + where you stand. I have several times worked on and hg qrefreshed a patch other than the + one I intended, and it's often tricky to migrate changes into + the right patch after making them in the wrong one. + + For this reason, it is very much worth investing a little + time to learn how to use some of the third-party tools I + described in section , + particularly diffstat and + filterdiff. The former will give you a quick + idea of what changes your patch is making, while the latter + makes it easy to splice hunks selectively out of one patch and + into another. + + + + MQ cookbook + + + Manage <quote>trivial</quote> patches + + Because the overhead of dropping files into a new + Mercurial repository is so low, it makes a lot of sense to + manage patches this way even if you simply want to make a few + changes to a source tarball that you downloaded. + + Begin by downloading and unpacking the source tarball, and + turning it into a Mercurial repository. + + Continue by creating a patch stack and making your + changes. + + Let's say a few weeks or months pass, and your package + author releases a new version. First, bring their changes + into the repository. The pipeline starting with hg + locate above deletes all files in the working + directory, so that hg + commit's option can + actually tell which files have really been removed in the + newer version of the source. + + Finally, you can apply your patches on top of the new + tree. + + + + Combining entire patches + + MQ provides a command, hg qfold that lets you combine + entire patches. This folds the patches you + name, in the order you name them, into the topmost applied + patch, and concatenates their descriptions onto the end of its + description. The patches that you fold must be unapplied + before you fold them. + + The order in which you fold patches matters. If your + topmost applied patch is foo, and you + hg qfold + bar and quux into it, + you will end up with a patch that has the same effect as if + you applied first foo, then + bar, followed by + quux. + + + + Merging part of one patch into another + + Merging part of one patch into + another is more difficult than combining entire + patches. + + If you want to move changes to entire files, you can use + filterdiff's and options to choose the + modifications to snip out of one patch, concatenating its + output onto the end of the patch you want to merge into. You + usually won't need to modify the patch you've merged the + changes from. Instead, MQ will report some rejected hunks + when you hg qpush it (from + the hunks you moved into the other patch), and you can simply + hg qrefresh the patch to drop + the duplicate hunks. + + If you have a patch that has multiple hunks modifying a + file, and you only want to move a few of those hunks, the job + becomes more messy, but you can still partly automate it. Use + lsdiff -nvv to print some metadata about + the patch. + + This command prints three different kinds of + number: + + (in the first column) a file + number to identify each file modified in the + patch; + + (on the next line, indented) the line number + within a modified file where a hunk starts; + and + + (on the same line) a hunk + number to identify that + hunk. + + + You'll have to use some visual inspection, and reading of + the patch, to identify the file and hunk numbers you'll want, + but you can then pass them to to + filterdiff's and options, to + select exactly the file and hunk you want to extract. + + Once you have this hunk, you can concatenate it onto the + end of your destination patch and continue with the remainder + of section . + + + + + Differences between quilt and MQ + + If you are already familiar with quilt, MQ provides a + similar command set. There are a few differences in the way + that it works. + + You will already have noticed that most quilt commands have + MQ counterparts that simply begin with a + q. The exceptions are quilt's + add and remove commands, + the counterparts for which are the normal Mercurial hg add and hg + remove commands. There is no MQ equivalent of the + quilt edit command. + + + + +