Some suggestions

[Radoslaw Szkodzinski]

Rafael Villar Burke wrote:
> I'd like to point out some ideas and other things I miss in Mercurial:
> 
> - I think 'hg status' should be more verbose when no files have changed 
> and, instead of showing no output at all, it should print something like 
> "No changes in tracked files". Not having any feedback makes you wonder 
> whether the command is working or not.
It would pose a problem for my shell scripts. Maybe with --verbose?

> 
> - When updating, it would be nice to see a list of changed files (with 
> status information, such as Changed, Added, Removed...), at least when 
> using a verbose mode.
> 
Great idea. Will implement soon.

> Man page or documentation improvements needed:
> 
> - 'add' and 'addremove' don't tell if they recursively add files and 
> directories. This last one also doesn't inform if a commit is needed to 
> evectively add and remove files to the repo.
> 
Both add files, however addremove adds *all* unknown files too.

> - There's no builtin help about the clone command now (thumbs up for 
> this command, yay!).
> 
astralstorm at zen mercurial $ hg help clone
hg clone [options] <source> [dest]

  -U --no-update
    skip update after cloning

make a copy of an existing repository

Did you mean manpage? Now, that's waiting for a fix.

> - The result of running 'hg update [revision]' is not very clear from 
> the docs so you have to read the text twice to make your mind clear. If 
> you have a repo with some changed files in it... will it try to merge 
> only when there are no conflicts?. or won't it merge without the -m 
> option?. What I understand is that it merges by default, unles the -m 
> option is given, but changes are not automatically commited to the 
> repository, as they may need the user's intervention.
> 
It doesn't merge without -m option if there are any modifications to the 
repository.

> - for the 'update' command I think it would be easier to remember having 
> -m for --merge-changes and -d for --discard-changes, rather than the 
> current choice -m for --merge and -C for --clean, specially in this last 
> one case. (I agree, this is a bit nitpicky, but it would make the 
> options crystal clear wrto its meaning...).
> 
I always thought of -C as --cancel. It's exactly what it does - cancels your 
modifications to files.

> - the 'tags' or 'tag' sections should succinctly explain the use of the 
> local tags facilities through .hgtags. It's already mentioned in the 
> .hgtags section, but it's far in the text, it's also pertinent here. 
> Also, it would be good to explain that local tags don't need the use of 
> 'hg tag', and whether they get listed too with 'hg tags' (then they 
> should be specially marked, probably).
> 
A patch is on my shortlist.

> <snip>
> - 'history' and 'log' seem a bit redundant. Couldn't be used one of them 
> (I'd rather prefer history) to get the same behaviour. If no file is 
> given, then we have what currently the history command shows, while if 
> one is used as argument we would have the current log.
>
I really prefer log over history:
a) it's shorter
b) it's consistent with cogito
c) both are as expressive

> Some of these changes are implemented in the attached patch.
>
Dud one, entirely blank.

> Overall I'm really enjoying the use of Mercurial and I really like its 
> usage, it's getting much more easy to use than any other SCMs without 
> lacking power...
Only Cogito comes close to Mercurial in functionality and it produces much too 
large repositories for me. (upcoming git-*pack* patches strive to solve this 
problem). It also doesn't work on Win32 without Cygwin.

AstralStorm
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