# Mercurial

Mercurial (commonly referred to as hg) is a distributed version control system written in Python and is similar in many ways to Git, Bazaar and Darcs.

## Installation

Install mercurial, available in the Official repositories.

## Configuration

At the minimum you should configure your username or mercurial will most likely give you an error when trying to commit. Do this by editing `~/.hgrc` and adding the following:

    ~/.hgrc

    [ui]
    username = John Smith

To use the graphical browser hgk aka. hg view, add the following to `~/.hgrc` (see forum thread):

    ~/.hgrc

    [extensions]
    hgk=

You will need to install tk before running hg view to avoid the rather cryptic error message:

    /usr/bin/env: wish: No such file or directory

To remove Mercurial warnings of unverified certificate fingerprints, add the following to `~/.hgrc` (see Mercurial wiki):

    ~/.hgrc

    [web]
    cacerts = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

If you are going to be working with large repositories (e.g. ttf-google-fonts-hgAUR[broken link: archived in aur-mirror]), you may want to enable the progress extension by adding it to your `~/.hgrc` file:

    ~/.hgrc

    [extensions]
    progress =

This will show progress bars on longer operations after 3 seconds. If you would like the progress bar to show sooner, you can append the following to your configuration file:

    ~/.hgrc

    [progress]
    delay = 1.5

## Usage

All mercurial commands are initiated with the hg prefix. To see a list of some of the common commands, run

    $ hg help

You can either work with a pre-existing repository (collection of code or files), or create your own to share.

To work with a pre-existing repository, you must clone it to a directory of your choice:

    $ mkdir mercurial
    $ cd mercurial
    $ hg clone http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/

To create you own, change to the directory you wish to share and initiate a mercurial project

    $ cd myfiles
    $ hg init myfiles

### Dotfiles Repo

If you intend on creating a repo of all your `~/.` files, you simply initiate the project in your home folder:

    $ hg init

It is then just a case of adding the specific files you wish to track:

    $ hg add

You can then create a `~/.hgignore` to ensure that only the files you wish to include in the repository are tracked by mercurial.

Tip: If you include: syntax: glob at the top of the `.hgignore` file, you can easily exclude groups of files from your repository.

## See also

- Mercurial: The Definitive Guide
- hginit.com - a tutorial by Joel Spolsky
- Mercurial Kick-Start one more tutorial by Aragost.
- Bitbucket - free and commercial hosting of mercurial repositories
- Intuxication - free mercurial hosting

Category:

- Version Control System

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