Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:11:28 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Merging with Mercurial (was: Re: macosx stuff seeping into the ports?) Message-ID: <20070713221128.GA1695@kobe.laptop> In-Reply-To: <20070712163614.GI1254@tigger.digitaltorque.ca> References: <20070712163614.GI1254@tigger.digitaltorque.ca>
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On 2007-07-12 12:36, "Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier@digitaltorque.ca> wrote:
> I just tried a merge with mercurial, built out of ports.
>
> /usr/local/bin/hgmerge:
> /Developer/Applications/Utilities/FileMerge.app/Contents/MacOS/FileMerge: not found
>
> Umm, why the hell would I have that on FreeBSD??
The default 'hgmerge' script distributed as part of the official
Mercurial tree tries FileMerge and a few other merge-tools before
giving up.
You can always replace the default merge-tool with one you like better,
by a variety of methods:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Setting in your ~/.hgrc file the ui.merge option:
[ui]
merge = kdiff3
Popular choices for [ui.merge] include kdiff3, meld and I've recently
started experimenting with Sun's "gpyfm" Python/GTK+ GUI merge tool.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Setting HGMERGE in the environment of the `hg' utility:
$ env HGMERGE=true hg merge
When you use this sort of 'merge trickery', you can do things like:
$ hg up -C localhead
$ env HGMERGE=true hg merge [remotehead]
and then you can selectively "revert" files to their local head version,
or to their remote head version:
$ hg revert --no-backup -r remotehead obj/lib/libfoo.so.1
$ hg revert --no-backup -r localhead obj/bin/*
This tends to a bit error-prone and doesn't really help when you
_really_ want to do a 3-way merge of source code or text files.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of the available merge tools tend to create a varying level of mess
with binary files, like snapshots of build trees, so I'm looking at
alternative ways of merging.
Each time Mercurial invokes $HGMERGE or [ui.merge] there is a conflict
because both the local and remote branch has modified the same file.
Ideally, it should be possible to write a smarter merge wrapper script,
which is written in Python to hook into Mercurial as a backend, and
provide the user with more choices, like:
$ export HGMERGE=smart-merge
$ hg up -C localhead
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
$ hg merge [remotehead]
Merging file obj/lib/libfoo.so.1
command: (a)ccept, (d)iff, (e)dit, (h)istory, (m)erge, (q)uit
changeset: (a)ncestor, (p)arent, (c)hild, (m)erged
[m]>
At which point, you can run commands like:
? accept child
? acc ch
? diff parent
? h p
or any sort of command which can be auto-completed to something
meaningful using some sort of syntax like the one shown above.
This way it would be _much_ easier to merge binary files, and given a
sufficiently 'smart' HGMERGE application it could be easy to merge by
pressing RET RET RET a few times, and let the defaults apply :)
This may be tricky to write, and I don't trust my Python skills yet to
embark on such a project, so I'm just using a local wrapper around
gdiff3 and Sun's gpyfm GTK+-based merge tool (gpyfm) for now. For
Mercurial workspaces which contain source code, this combination can
really work wonders :-)
If you need help with setting up something which supersedes the default
'hgmerge' script distributed with the Mercurial port, please feel free
to ask me for the merge scripts I am using locally, search for
"MergeProgram" in the Mercurial wiki[*], or hop into #mercurial on
Freenode IRC and chat with all the friendly folks there.
[*] http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/
I hope all this helps a bit,
- Giorgos
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