Looking up revision number off a central repository

[cowwoc]

  On 03/08/2010 6:53 PM, Steve Borho wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Kevin Bullock
> <kbullock+mercurial at ringworld.org>  wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Aug 3, 2010, at 5:09 PM, cowwoc wrote:
>>
>>>     Increasing revision numbers are inherently simple to work with. I'm more than happy to use changesets if I find a way to make them work.
>>
>> As Matt pointed out, revision numbers _don't tell you what you want them to tell you_ outside the context of forced-linear history (a la SVN). Your testers would end up making false assumptions about what changesets are included in their build.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I don't know of a tool that gives quite the simple interface you'd be looking for; if you could build something like `hg log --graph --rev 'ancestors(foo)'` you'd be on the right track. In any case, you will have to teach your testers how to deal with the way a DVCS keeps history.
> For what it's worth, TortoiseHg _can_ answer this question for you.
> Here's the steps:
>
> 1.  Open the Repository Explorer
> 2.  Click/Select the revision you are testing (A)
> 3.  Right click on the bug fix change you are curious about (B)
> 4.  From the menu chose 'Select common ancestor revision'
>
> If the selected revision is the bug fix revision (B), then A is an
> ancestor of B.  If it's any other revision then you know that A and B
> are on separate branches lines of development, or A predates B.
Hi Steve,

     First I had to locate the two changesets in the graph. No easy feat 
seeing as changesets are not visible by default. Once made visible, I 
had to manually locate them in the graph (there is no easy way to search 
for and select two changesets at a time). Finally, it's not safe to 
assume that testers will know how to clone the repository. I assume this 
only works for local repositories?

     I assume I'm not the first person to ask about the use of Mercurial 
in a commercial setting. What is the typical workflow between 
development and testers in other companies?

Thanks,
Gili