[issue197] make default output of "hg help" useful
Bryan O'Sullivan
mercurial-bugs at selenic.com
Mon Apr 3 22:02:37 UTC 2006
New submission from Bryan O'Sullivan <bos at serpentine.com>:
Over lunch with a friend, he mentioned that the default output of "hg help" is
not very helpful. I took a look, and sure enough I was astounded. It prints 46
lines of output, including a line for just about every command.
This is really not a good thing to be presented with if you're new to using
Mercurial, or probably under any circumstances short of asking for a list of all
commands.
I'd strongly suggest that the default output of "hg help" be task-oriented.
Something like this would be much better:
Basic repository commands
init create a new, empty repository
clone make a copy of an existing repository
pull, push receive changes from, send to another repository
incoming, outgoing show what pull or push would transmit
log (history) view history of repository, files, or directories
Basic working directory commands
commit save changes from working directory as one changeset
update sync working directory with a specific changeset
merge make working directory contain merger of two changesets
parents show what changeset(s) working directory is based on
status, diff
see what has changed in working directory vs parents
add, remove (rm), rename (mv), copy (cp)
change how files are tracked at next commit
revert return modified files back to their unedited states
This is less than 24 lines long; each line is less than 72 characters wide; and
every common command is listed.
We can then add a "hg help commands" command that lists every command, just as
"hg help" misguidedly does now.
----------
messages: 933
nosy: bos
priority: urgent
status: unread
title: make default output of "hg help" useful
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Mercurial issue tracker <mercurial-bugs at selenic.com>
<http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/bts/issue197>
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