My experiences with Mercurial

[Satish Balay]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007, Milen Dzhumerov wrote:

> I mentioned earlier that if we needed to set up a central server for mercurial
> then we're better off sticking with subversion as everything is already set up
> and working. We looked into eliminating the need for the repository server
> while preserving the security requirements. 

I think 'eliminating the repository server' is the wrong way to look
at mercurial.

For one, what I mentioned is a shell account with ssh access and
merucrial installed [and backups are not even necessary].  Just to
avoid doing this, you are:

- mistakingly assuming the benefits of of mercurial are available only
  when 'all to all' communication is possible. [i.e only if all run
  their own servers]

- reverting to svn, and loosing all the benefits of a distruibuted
  revision control tool.
    * aka full revision history & commit access availale to all users
      when offline.
    * easily manage release branches [as separate clones] etc..
    * developers who whish to setup their own clone hierarchy for
    different things can to do so, while others can stick with the
    simple shared repo model.

> Ideally, there would be a "hg serve --secure --certificate-directory ~/certs"
> command which would painlessly allow us to share changesets.

[I'm not debating the merits of having/not-having this feature in
mercurial - just your sugested usage model] What if some of your
developers are behind nat-boxes/firewalls they don't control?

[If you decide to choose svn because thats a better tool than
mercurial for your project needs, then thats a different matter]

Satish