MERCURIAL QUICK-START

Setting up Mercurial:

 Note: some distributions fails to include bits of distutils by
 default, you'll need python-dev to install. You'll also need a C
 compiler and a 3-way merge tool like merge, tkdiff, or kdiff3.

 First, unpack the source:

 $ tar xvzf mercurial-<ver>.tar.gz
 $ cd mercurial-<ver>

 When installing, change python to python2.3 or python2.4 if 2.2 is the
 default on your system.

 To install system-wide:

 $ python setup.py install --force

 To install in your home directory (~/bin and ~/lib, actually), run:

 $ python setup.py install --home=${HOME} --force
 $ export PYTHONPATH=${HOME}/lib/python  # (or lib64/ on some systems)
 $ export PATH=${HOME}/bin:$PATH         # add these to your .bashrc

 And finally:

 $ hg                                    # test installation, show help

 If you get complaints about missing modules, you probably haven't set
 PYTHONPATH correctly.

Setting up a Mercurial project:

 $ hg init project     # creates project directory
 $ cd project
                       # copy files in, edit them
 $ hg add              # add all unknown files
 $ hg commit           # commit all changes, edit changelog entry

 Mercurial will look for a file named .hgignore in the root of your
 repository which contains a set of regular expressions to ignore in
 file paths.

Branching and merging:

 $ hg clone project project-work    # create a new branch
 $ cd project-work
 $ <make changes>
 $ hg commit
 $ cd ../project
 $ hg pull ../project-work   # pull changesets from project-work
 $ hg merge                  # merge the new tip from project-work into
                             # our working directory
 $ hg commit                 # commit the result of the merge

Importing patches:

 Simple:
 $ patch < ../p/foo.patch
 $ hg commit -A

 Fast:
 $ cat ../p/patchlist | xargs hg import -p1 -b ../p

Exporting a patch:

 (make changes)
 $ hg commit
 $ hg export tip > foo.patch    # export latest change

Network support:

 # pull from the primary Mercurial repo
 foo$ hg clone http://selenic.com/hg/
 foo$ cd hg

 # export your current repo via HTTP with browsable interface
 foo$ hg serve -n "My repo" -p 80

 # pushing changes to a remote repo with SSH
 foo$ hg push ssh://user@example.com/~/hg/

 # merge changes from a remote machine
 bar$ hg pull http://foo/
 bar$ hg merge   # merge changes into your working directory

 # Set up a CGI server on your webserver
 foo$ cp hgweb.cgi ~/public_html/hg/index.cgi
 foo$ emacs ~/public_html/hg/index.cgi # adjust the defaults

For more info:

 Documentation in doc/
 Mercurial website at http://selenic.com/mercurial