9. Use with other VCS systems

This chapter describes the three most popular Mercurial extensions for interoperating with foreign VCS systems. See also Repository Conversion

9.1. Perfarce (Perforce)

This extension modifies the remote repository handling so that repository paths that resemble:

p4://p4server[:port]/clientname

cause operations on the named p4 client specification on the p4 server. The client specification must already exist on the server before using this extension. Making changes to the client specification Views causes problems when synchronizing the repositories, and should be avoided.

Five built-in Mercurial commands are overridden.

outgoing:

If the destination repository name starts with p4:// then this
reports files affected by the revision(s) that are in the local
repository but not in the p4 depot.

push:

If the destination repository name starts with p4:// then this
exports changes from the local repository to the p4 depot. If no
revision is specified then all changes since the last p4 changelist
are pushed. In either case, all revisions to be pushed are foled
into a single p4 changelist.  Optionally the resulting changelist is
submitted to the p4 server, controlled by the --submit option to
push, or by setting **perfarce.submit** to True.  If the option
**perfarce.keep** is False then after a successful submit the files
in the p4 workarea will be deleted.

pull:

If the source repository name starts with p4:// then this imports
changes from the p4 depot, automatically creating merges of
changelists submitted by hg push.  If the config option
**perfarce.keep** is False then the import does not leave files in
the p4 workarea, otherwise the p4 workarea will be updated with the
new files.

incoming:

If the source repository name starts with p4:// then this
reports changes in the p4 depot that are not yet in the local
repository.

clone:

If the source repository name starts with p4:// then this
creates the destination repository and pulls all changes from
the p4 depot into it.

The perfarce.tags configuration option determines whether perfarce tries to import Perforce labels as Mercurial tags.

TortoiseHg Integration

When the perfarce extension is enabled, it adds a start revision configurable option to the clone tool, and a P4 toolbar button to the sync tool.

The toolbar button performs the p4pending operation. It detects pending Perforce changelists that have been “push”ed to your Perforce client but have not been submitted, or have not been pulled back. This opens the pending changelist dialog so that you can view these pending changelists and either submit or revert them. If Perforce fails the submit because your files are out of date, you must revert the changelist, pull from Perforce, merge, then push again.

Installation

Perfarce comes bundled with TortoiseHg Windows installers, so you enable perfarce by simply adding it to your Mercurial.ini or a repository’s hgrc like this:

[extensions]
perfarce=

Note

The perfarce extension has been known to not work together with hgsubversion, so if you plan to use both extensions they should be enabled locally on the repositories that require them.

9.2. hgsubversion (SVN)

hgsubversion, as it’s name implies, allows you to use Mercurial as a client to a Subversion server. It can also be used to do straight conversions of Subversion repositories into Mercurial.

Installation

TortoiseHg Windows installers come with the python-svn bindings that hgsubversion requires, so one only needs to clone the hgsubversion repository to your local computer:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/durin42/hgsubversion/ C:\hgsvn

Then enable the extension in your Mercurial.ini file, specifying the hgsubversion folder inside the cloned repository:

[extensions]
hgsubversion = C:\hgsvn\hgsubversion

You can verify that worked by typing hg help hgsubversion

See the hgsubversion wiki for details of use. We recommend an hgsubversion version of at least 1.2.1 with Mercurial 1.8.

Warning

When cloning a Subversion server, it is highly recommended to clone only the first few revisions then pull the rest. The failure behavior of the clone command is to delete the incomplete clone, while pull is much more forgiving.

TortoiseHg Integration

Imported Subversion changesets will display the original Subversion checkin number in the Changeset Info widget in the Revision Details task tab of the Workbench.

9.3. hg-git (git)

hg-git, as its name implies, allows you to use Mercurial as a client to a git server. It can also be used to do straight conversions of Git repositories into Mercurial.

Installation

TortoiseHg Windows installers come with the python-git bindings (named dulwich) that hg-git requires, so one only needs to clone the hg-git repository to your local computer:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/durin42/hg-git/ C:\hg-git

Then enable hggit in your Mercurial.ini file:

[extensions]
hggit = C:\hg-git\hggit

You can verify that worked by typing hg help hggit

Current versions of TortoiseHg include dulwich version 0.7.0. We recommend to use hg-git version 0.2.6 with this version of dulwich and Mercurial 1.8.

See the hggit documentation for details of use.

Beware the ‘incoming’ command appears broken when speaking with git repositories, and ‘outgoing’ does not show much useful info. So you are restricted to simple push and pull commands, which is common with Mercurial extensions that speak to external revision control tools.

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