Hg for “Source Code” only?

[Martin Geisler]

Pietro Moras <studio-pm at hotmail.com> writes:

Hi Pietro,

> Mercurial defines itself precisely as a “Source Code Management
> System” [see: Mercurial Command Reference] instead of, say, as a more
> usual, and generic, “Version Control System”.

I don't understand why you put square brackets into the text above? It
looks similar to an academic citation, but there one still needs to put
a full reference in a Bibliography section :)

Here it would have been helpful if you would include a link to the
document you call the "Mercurial Command Reference". I've contributed a
fair bit to the documentation infrastructure in Mercurial, and I'm not
aware of a document with that title. My best guess is that you are
talking about the hg(1) manpage:

  http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/hg.1.html

That document has "Mercurial source code management system" as a
subtitle. I think you mistaken if you take that as a formal and precise
definition of the scope of Mercurial -- in my eyes, it's just a
subtitle.

To put it differently: Mercurial is often called a DVCS, and I think
"Distributed Version Control System" would have been en equally good
subtitle for that page. The current subtitle was added in 2005, it is
revision 177 in the main repository:

  http://selenic.com/hg/rev/91055f795d88

> Fine. I wander if “Source Code” is here to be intended as a precise
> scope delimitation, that is “any collection of computer instructions
> (possibly with comments) written using some human-readable computer
> language, usually as plain text” only. Or not...Thanks. - P.M.

You have probably experimented a little with Mercurial by now and will
have seen that Mercurial is capable of storing (and versioning) files of
any type.

This means that Mercurial will accuratedly store and distribute binary
files such as JPEG images or MP3 files. What is limited is your ability
to interact with the files from the command line:

* 'hg diff' will tell you that the file is binary and that it cannot
  show differences in the terminal.

* 'hg merge' will again tell you that the files are binary and offer you
  the choice of keeping one of the versions you're merging.

You get similar results from other commands that interact with the file
content. However, commands like 'hg log foo.jpg' or 'hg status bar.mp3'
work just fine.

-- 
Martin Geisler

http://google.com/+MartinGeisler
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 818 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.mercurial-scm.org/pipermail/mercurial/attachments/20140420/5b85b773/attachment.asc>