[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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