Mercurial whine:

hg merge -r tip

is NOT the same as

hg merge -r default

Because Mercurial's tip may be on a branch. tip is just the most recent changeset, anywhere. I have hit bugs caused by following hg recipes that talk about using -r tip. Sigh.

Tentative checkin for branch only, not to be merged?

Here's another: Working on a branch, I just did a pull, and merged from trunk onto the beranch. I notice that somebody else has a minor bug on the trunk: it looks like they forgot to check in a test reference pattern, although it is also possible that the test has been checked in before the golden behavior is established. I report the bug. But I would like to silence the error, at least on my branch. I can make the change to the reference patterns. However, I do not know if that change is goosd. I just want to silence it, or mark it as a known error. I don't want my change to propagate back to the trunk when eventually I merge and push. I.e. my branch now contains some tentative stuff, as well as some stuff that I am confident will soon be merghed. On CVS I would create a per file branch for the reference, and work off a merged directory. Eventually, I would update to the main branch, ahnd not get5 my patched test. Unclear how to do this in Mercurial, apart from remembering that I have to delete it eventually. Oh, here's a way:

// working on branch B
hg pull
hg merge -r tip
make test
// make change to silence test error
hg branch Bb
// somehow copy old version of patched file to pre brahnch
hg ci // on Bb
hg update -r B
// now work
// when ready to merge, do the usual
hg pull
hg merge
make test
// now do the extra step to be confident that you aren't pushing anything broken
hg update -r Bb
hg merge -r B
// now should have B, except for that one change that was tenative
make test
// see if the bug was fixed by someone else...
// ok, now merge to default branch, and then push
// - since I am paranoid, I might pull and test again
hg update -r default
hg merge -r Bb
make test
hg push

Works, but is complicated. I am quite likely to forget that I am supposed to merge from branch B onto Bb before merging to the trunk. {{Category-VCS}}{{Category-hg}}

AFAICT Mercurial only allows you to merge entire changesets.

Here is an example of why I may want to do a merge at lower granularity:

• I am working on a branch B
• I do a pull from the parent, hg pull
• I merge from the parent on to my branch B, because I am not yet ready to merge back onto the trunk (aka default branch)
• I run my tests

Now I notice that the .hgignore that I got from the parent is missing a file.  I fix it in my repository, to shut it up.

Then I realize that I should push such a generic change back to the trunk asap.

What I want to do is something like"

  hg clone work-repo quick-fix
  cd quick-fix
  hg update -r default
  hg merge -r B  .hgignore     # to merge just the change to .hgignore into the trunk
  make clean;hg purge
  make test
  hg ci
  ...
  hg push

I.e. I want to merge JUST the change to .hgignore, using "hg merge -r B .hgignore". Instead I do

  hg clone work-repo quick-fix
  cd quick-fix
  hg update -r default
  cp ../work-repo/.hgignore .
  make clean;hg purge
  make test
  hg ci
  ...
  hg push

I.e. "cp ../work-repo/.hgignore ." is used instead of "hg merge -r B .hgignore". Although this works, it makes me unhappy. E.g. I may blithely have overwritten other changes, e.g. if I cloned from the master rather than the work-repo. Not to mention the fact that the "hg push" abnove would push my branch. And my teammates do not want my branch to be pushed, because it has too many fine grain checkins - they want just a single checkin message. But that's another story.

I'd like to have a text parser, like Perl CPAN Text::ParseWords,
that *only* breaks the text into words
- but which does not transform the words, handle escape characters, etc.

For example,
   Text::ParseWords::
      shellwords("a b 'c d' e")
returns
   a
   b
   c d
   e
i.e. it breaks the text up into words,
but it also transforms the words.

I would like to separate the breakup from the transformation:
   a
   b
   'c d'
   e

Note that if you ever encounter such a list whose words can themselves be further broken up,
then you know that it has been parsed by some tool after your original parser.

[[Category:Programming]] [[Categy::Text]]

Thumb drive as a webserver / NAS

I wish that I could find a flash drive that acted as a NAS.

Most USB flash drives are passive storage. Encryption is done by the OS you plug into.  Since I run Windows and various *IXes, and want to access my data from each, depending on a particular OS is a pain.

Booting an OS from the USB flash drive is better - but still not great, since it makes assumptions about the platform you are plugging in to. Typically, that it is a PC.

Flash drives have non-trivial processors in them.  Probably running Linux.  Why not make them a peer?

Issue: network interface.

I don't really want to add a typical Cat 5 ethernet connector - what is that, RJ45, 8P8C plug? - to the flash drive, neither in addition to nor replacing USB.

Q: I am sure there is a standard for networking over USB - but how ubiquitous is it?  I do not recall ever getting the option, when I plug in a USB flash drive, of connecting a webnrowser to a server running on tghe drive.

Gratuitous key position changes.

Was wondering why "search"  or "find" in Google chrome was broken.

Wasn't.  For the past week I was using a keyboard that was not my usual, with the keys in the lower left hand corner looking like Ctrl,Fn,...

Just switched back to what has been my usual keyboard for several months, with those keys swapped: Fn,Ctrl,...

It's funny how these trivial differences in devices are some of the most annoying.

Last time I shopped for keyboards, I bought 3 identical.  Not my favorite keyboard, but cheap enough that i could afford 3 of them.  Home, work, and Oceanside.

Yeah, yeah: remapping. Loses.

(The only good form of keyboard remapping is one that is downloaded into a PROM on the keyboard, so that it works in all modes, even before the OS boots.)

hg schemes extension

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/SchemesExtension

I like the idea of this extension, that allows you to create shortcuts for URLs you use often, e.g. cloning.

E.g.

[extensions]
hgext.schemes=

[schemes]
ups = ssh://my-uarch-performance-simulator/...

However, it is something of a no-sale when I saw that the URL was notexpanded in the clone:

> hg clone ups: u
...
> cd u
> hg paths
default = ups://
> 

Or in WorkDir/.hg/hgrc

[paths]
default = ups:

PRO: when the remote repository changges location, this *might* allow you to change the scheme URL shorthand in hgrc, and have things work in the possibly multiple clones you have outstanding.

CON: it loses some documentation. If I got run over by a beer truck, my replacement might have trouble finding where it was from.  Worse, if a repo was restored from backup (particularly if people keep branches as repos), and my home directory with the ~/.hgrc enabling SchemesExtension was  not present.

I'm not sure what I would like. Possibly always expand the shorthand.  Possibly record the shorthand with the long path as a comment:

[paths]
default = ups: # ssh://my-uarch-performance-simulator/...

> hg paths
default = ups:// # ssh://my-uarch-performance-simulator/...

TBD: move this to my wiki Category:VCS.