[issue2005] Obtaining the state of a repository in one command

[Philippe Biondi]

New submission from Philippe Biondi <hgissues.web at secdev.org>:

I run many projects at the same time, many repositories of the same project,
and often stop using one for days if not monthes. Each time I come back, the
question is the same: What state did I left the repository in ? At which
point did I stop in my work ? Was I interrupted in the middle of something ?

I need to check for uncommited changes, for applied and non-applied mqueue
patches, and look for notes I could have left for myself. This checklist is
the result of my experience with mercurial, obtained by making errors. And I
may still forget stuff to check. And new plugins may add more stuff to pay
attention to when you come back to a repository after monthes. And beginners
may forget most of the things we find obvious.

This is only the begining of my reflexion. Sorry if it looks a bit messy.
I was thinking about a command that would summarize the current state of the
repository. For instance: summary of uncommited changes, latest commmit,
applied/unapplied mqueues, list of heads, etc. I did not find a good name
yet for such command. "hg state" is too close to "hg status". Maybe "hg
whereami" ? "hg situation" ?

I was also thinking to a way to leave notes to myself. I.e. something more
personnal than what you would put inside a TODO file and that you don't want
to version. For instance:
hg slate -e # edit your slate with $EDITOR .hg/slate.txt
hg slate # cat .hg/slate.txt

I know this seems ridiculous to only paraphrase existing system commands,
but I thing integrating it as a hg command means you won't spend several
seconds trying to remember where you did put those notes 2 monthes ago, if
you ever did. And last but not least, the slate could be displayed with "hg
whereami".

What do you think ?

----------
messages: 11534
nosy: phil
priority: feature
status: unread
title: Obtaining the state of a repository in one command

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