Free Software Linux

Dan Fuchs posted a short article about scripting Mercurial to see what files an incoming changeset modifies. I am always amazed at how easy Mercurial (and other free software tools) make this sort of thing. For example, in my ~/bin/ directory I have a small shell script: #!/usr/bin/ksh -p function fmtlog { awk -F^L '{ printf "%12s | %12s | %-18s |",$1,$2,$3; for (k = 4; k <= NF; k++) { printf " %s", $k; } printf "\n"; }' } tmpl='{date|age}^L{node|short}^L{author|user}^L{desc|firstline}\n' hg in --template "${tmpl}" "$@" | grep '^L.*^L.*^L' | fmtlog This is a tiny and pretty naive wrapper around "hg incoming" but it shows a nice one-line summary of each incoming changeset: $ cd /ws/mercurial/gker $ inc ../crew 3 days | 7dfac37cfabf | mpm | dirstate: improve performance for building _dirs 3 days | 892d27fb04a5 | mpm | osutil: fix some braindamage 3 days | 0d513661d6c2 | mpm | listdir: add support for aborting if a certain path is found 21 hours | aafe12bd7174 | msommerville | hgk: Display branch name for each head (issue 740) $ It's trivial to write a similar "out" wrapper for outgoing changes, and it's also possible to use the standard options of "hg incoming" or "hg outgoing", like "--limit": $ inc --limit 2 ../crew 3 days | 7dfac37cfabf | mpm | dirstate: improve performance for building _dirs 3 days | 892d27fb04a5 | mpm | osutil: fix some braindamage $ or to pull all the changes from a remote network repositor, look at a quick summary, and save the incoming changesets in a local bundle: $ inc --bundle /tmp/crew.hg http://hg.intevation.org/mercurial/crew 3 days | 7dfac37cfabf | mpm | dirstate: improve performance for building _dirs 3 days | 892d27fb04a5 | mpm | osutil: fix some braindamage 3 days | 0d513661d6c2 | mpm | listdir: add support for aborting if a certain path is found 21 hours | aafe12bd7174 | msommerville | hgk: Display branch name for each head (issue 740) $ Then we can pull from the local bundle, instead of going through a network round-trip once again: $ hg pull /tmp/crew.hg && rm -f /tmp/crew.hg pulling from /tmp/crew.hg searching for changes adding changesets adding manifests adding file changes added 4 changesets with 6 changes to 4 files (run 'hg update' to get a working copy) $ inc http://hg.intevation.org/mercurial/crew $ It's little details like this one, and the feeling that whenever an extension is needed, everything is open, easy to modify, integrate, and adapt, that make UNIX a pleasant working environment.

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