I’ve played around with three version control systems during my learning and working period. The first was CVS, where it was the first time I’ve touched a version-control mechanism during university. The second being Mercurial and lastly, Git; two of which I’ve learnt partially for supporting customers while I was working with Atlassian.

Now as I’m in a developer’s role, I would feel the need to pick up a version-control system as what most developers do. Thus, I re-learnt Mercurial once more.

There are a few basic commands that one should know and understand for a better understanding on how Mercurial works. Here’s a list of common commands that I’ve stumbled upon thus far.

hg init

• initialize the current directory to be a repo

hg add %FILE_NAME%

• add %FILE_NAME% to the repo

hg commit -m "%YOUR_MESSAGE%"

• confirms changes to the repo
• -m argument: for adding a commit message to the commit

hg clone

• hg clone %REPO_URL% %NEW_FOLDER%
  • for cloning online repos
  • %REPO_URL% = repo URL
• hg clone %CUR_REPO% %NEW_REPO%
  • for cloning existing local repo to a new one
  • %CUR_REPO% = repo to clone
  • %NEW_REPO% = destination for the clone repo

hg parents or hg par

• to view which revision is currently checked out

hg log

• shows a summary of every event that occurs in the repo:

              $ hg log
              changeset:   1:82e55d328c8c
              tag:         tip
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              summary:     Create a makefile
              changeset:   0:0a04b987be5a
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:20:50 2005 -0700
              summary:     Create a standard "hello, world" program
              

• changeset – identifies the changeset.
  • first number before the colon = revision number.
    • short identity of the changeset
    • only valid in the current repo
  • hexadecimal string after the colon = changeset ID
    • actual identity of the changeset
    • valid in all repos that contains this changeset
• tag – symbolic name of the changeset.
  

  may contain tip (to identify the most recent changeset).

• user – identifies the user who created this changeset.
• date – local time of when this changeset was created.
• summary – changeset description.
• parent – identifies the parent changesets.

hg log -v

• detailed view of a repo’s history:

              $ hg log -v
              changeset:   1:82e55d328c8c
              tag:         tip
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              files:       Makefile
              description:
              Create a makefile
              (...)
              

• files – lists the modified files in this changeset.
• description – multi-line description of the changeset.

hg --debug

• an even more detailed view of a repo’s history:

              $ hg log --debug
              changeset:   1:82e55d328c8ca4ee16520036c0aaace03a5beb65
              tag:         tip
              parent:      0:0a04b987be5ae354b710cefeba0e2d9de7ad41a9
              parent:      -1:0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
              manifest:    1:0c7c1d435e6703e03ac6634a7c32da3a082d1600
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              files+:      Makefile
              extra:       branch=default
              description:
              Create a makefile
              (...)
              

• changeset – now provides the unabbreviated changeset ID.
• parent – now has 2:
  • changeset ID of both parents of this changeset.
  • -1:0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 refers to a non-existent parent.
• manifest – provides the manifest ID for the changeset.
  

  manifest describes the contents of a repo at a particular changeset ID.

• file+ – list files added to the changeset.
• file- – list files removed to the changeset.

hg log -r%CHANGESET_ID%

• view specific changesets; specified with the %CHANGESET_ID%:

              $ hg log -r1
              changeset:   1:82e55d328c8c
              tag:         tip
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              summary:     Create a makefile
              

hg log -r%CHANGESET_ID% -p

• show patches associated with the changesets:

              $ hg log -r1 -p
              changeset:   1:82e55d328c8c
              tag:         tip
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              summary:     Create a makefile
              diff -r 0a04b987be5a -r 82e55d328c8c Makefile
              --- /dev/null   Fri Aug 26 01:20:50 2005 -0700
              +++ b/Makefile  Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              @@ -0,0 +1,1 @@
              +all: hello
              

hg tip or hg log -r tip

• show info of the latest changeset:

              $ hg tip
              changeset:   1:82e55d328c8c
              tag:         tip
              user:        mpm@selenic.com
              date:        Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              summary:     Create a makefile
              

• adding the -q argument will just output the latest changeset’s ID:

              $ hg -q tip
              1:82e55d328c8c
              

hg status or hg st

• shows the status of files in the repo.
• a few denotations:
  

  Status	Definition
  M	modified
  ?	untracked in repo (not added)

hg diff

• a detailed view of the actual changes made to files:

              $ hg diff
              diff -r 82e55d328c8c hello.c
              --- a/hello.c   Fri Aug 26 01:21:28 2005 -0700
              +++ b/hello.c   Mon May 05 00:27:56 2008 +0200
              @@ -12,5 +12,6 @@
               int main(int argc, char **argv)
               {
                      printf("hello, world!\n");
              +       printf("sure am glad I'm using Mercurial!\n");
                      return 0;
               }
              

hg revert %FILE_NAME%

• reverts %FILE_NAME% to its unmodified state.
• to modify all files, replace %FILE_NAME% with --all.

hg ci

• creating a changeset.
• enter any message(s) on the first line.

hg pull

• grab latest changesets that does not exist in the current repo.
• can specify a path for a specific repo.

hg update or hg up

• updates the current repo with changes pulled from another.

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Author: jusuchin85

27 year old Software Engineer for Comptel in Kuala Lumpur. Loves Linux and Android, and finds cooking home cooked-food is sometimes better than eating out. Anime and manga fulfills his hunger for entertainment, as are Marvel movies.

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