abort: filename contains ':', which is reserved on Windows: ...

The usual: record one of my stupidities, in the ope that it will save someone else some time in the future - perhaps amnesiac me:

Just spent longer than I should have wondering why I was getting 

abort: filename contains ':', which is reserved on Windows: ...

errors - when all I was trying to do was hg update -r default, back to a version that I had been using just yesterday.

This on cygwin, on windows.

Turns out that my current revision had a broken ~/.bashrc, so instead of using cygwin mercurial, /bin/hg, I was using Windows Mercurial, /cygdrive/c/Program Files/TortoiseHg/hg

And the Windows Mercurial enforces Windows naming conventions.

Fix: just say /bin/hg ...

Why Gmail doesn't want me to be efficient

I have long complained that Gmail seems to want me to be inefficient.  E.g. instead of giving me a scrollable list of, say, 500 emails in response to a search, they insist on showing me screenfulls at a time.   Plus, they don't easily adjust to my current screen size - they always give me circa 20 items at a time.   Even when I am on large screen that can support 120 such.

Now, there may settings, like showing 100 conversations per page.  But (1) those don't apply to everything, e.g. not the searches - and if there is a setting that does, I have not found it. (2) They have not provided easy to adjust controls, such as dragging to enlarge the numbers shown.

I used to imagine that this was due to web HTML / Javascript limitations.

But now I suspect another reason:  if they help me be more efficient, I look at fewer ads.

Positive confirmation of success

Test suites should not just say "all tests passed".  Or, even worse, return success silently.

They should at least optionally list what tests have been run.  Or at least a summary of how many tests have been run.

It has happened before that tests have been omitted by accident.  Test suites themselves can have bugs.

This is just an example of where positive conformation of an action can be important.

However, it is nice to be able to turn off that positive confirmation, e.g. in UNIX pipelines.

Myself, I like "folding"such confirmation.

Metadata for Mercurial

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4443712/is-there-a-mercurial-extension-like-svn-propset/11679615#11679615

(I'm not saying anything that I haven't said before: metadata needs to be versioned (everything needs to be versioned), but metadata may be imagined as transcending versions in normal operation.  Looking at these Q&As helps me crystallize my thoughts.)

I'm going to add a really late quasi-answer to this question, since it is one that many, many, people using Mercurial, including me, ask - something we want to have, and expect to have, after using other tools like svn properties.

As far as I can tell, there is no such extension for Mercurial. yet.

Yes, the Mercurial way seems to be to track files and only files.  And it might be that they way to right such an extension is to put the necessary metadata into ...repo/.hg* files.

OK.  I've been playing around with that.  Doing stuff by hand, before trying to write tools.

The key weakness of the versioned .hg files approach is that if you check out a non-tip version, e.g. "hg update -r OLD-VERSION", you get an old version of the metadata.

I think the key thing, therefore, may be to put the metadata in ...repo/.hg* files.

But...  most operations should be performed with or upon the latest version of such files. I.e. I think such metadata files "transcend" versions - i.e. they want to be versioned, but in an ideal situation you might imagine them as overlaid upon the normally versioned files that you may have checked out an older version of.

Moreover, in many cases you want the branching of such metadata files to be handled separately.  E.g. imagine a file where you are trying to write a description of all branches, together. Perhaps comparing branches, like "branch1.1 is a more recent version of branch1".  You don't want that description to be on either branch; or, rather, you want it to be on both brancges, at the same time, and you want changes to be reflected on both branches.

Such a putative extension would either operate on "hg cat -r tip ...repo/.hg-my-new-metadata".  Or it would somehow overlay the versioned of the files with the normally version transcending metadata files.

I have made some progress on doing this with subrepos:

    superrepo
       files // normally-versioned-files <-- a subrepo
       metadata // version transcending metadata <-- a subrepo

this allows me to check out the latest metadata alongside an older version of the files

It's not quite there, because checking out a particular version of the superrepo may get old versions of the metadata subrepo. But at least the newer versions are in the subrepo.

Let me also note that, whether you put the metadata in a neighboring subrepo, or keep it in the same repo (but operate on the tip), there is a problem that you can do

    hg clone -r OLD-REVISION repo newrepo

This will strip out metadata later than OLD-REVISION.  Including the metadata that says that "OLD-REVISION passed all of the tests", i.e. it will strip out metadata from a later revision that might apply to OLD-REVISION.

This same problem happens with hg tags.

One might say "well, never do that" - never strip out history.  Unfortunately, that is often recommended as a way of "tidying up" the repository.

It seems hard to avoid this with Mercurial.

Wanted: hg branch -r REV

I want the following in Mercurial: -r REV argumn for hg branch.

Default "hg branch" is equivalnt to "hg branch -r ."

Branch of some other REV is "hg branch -r REV"

Actually, what I really want is this in revsets: "hg log -r "branch_of(.)"

Then I could do: hg log -r "max(ancestors(.) and not branch(branch_of(.)))"

- the most recent ancestor on a different branch

Ah: matching (just not in the version a work).  But it is not quite on...  it returns revs, not branch

co -r REV workspace = overlay co -r REV source + co -r LATEST metadata?

The Mercurial way seems to be to handle files and only files.

Metadata, like svn proprerties, indicating whether tests habve passed or not, in the Mercurial mindset lives only in files.  See, for example:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4443712/is-there-a-mercurial-extension-like-svn-propset

I actually am okay by this. Keep stuff in files.  However, I think there are issues wrt how a workspace should be assembled: more and more I think of a workspace as an overlay of metadata, in files, that transcends versions, and the actual versioned source code files.

I.e. if you have a file that describes all of the branches in a repo, and what they are used for, it rather defeats the purpose if, when you update the workspace to a branch, you lose other

Bob Colwell / Craig Barrett

http://newsletter.sigmicro.org/sigmicro-oral-history-transcripts/Bob-Colwell-Transcript.pdf


0:27:22 BC: That never happened. Instead, for example five Intel fellows including me went to visit Craig Barrett in June of 98 with the same Itanium story, that Itanium was not going to be able to deliver what was being promised. The positioning of Itanium relative to the x86
line  is wrong, because x86 is going to better than you think and Itanium is going to be worse and they're going to meet in the middle. We're being forced to put a gap in the product lines between Itanium and x86 to try to boost the prospects for Itanium. There's a gap there now that AMD is going to drive a truck through, they're going to, what do you think they're going to hit, they're going to go right after that hole" which in fact they did. It didn't take any deep insight to see all of these things, but Craig essentially got really mad at us, kicked us out of his office and said (and this is a direct quote) "I don't pay you to bring me bad news, I pay you to go make my plans work out".

0:28:26 BC: So and he, and at that point he stood up and walked out and to back of his head. I said, "Well that's just great Craig. You ignored the message and shot the messengers. I'll never be back no matter how strong of a message I've got that you need to hear, I'll never bring it to you now.”