hg notify inter-repo mechanics

[Simon King]

> On 4 Jan 2015, at 01:28, John Turner <jjturner at energi.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 03 Jan 2015 09:20:57 -0500, Mads Kiilerich <mads at kiilerich.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 01/02/2015 07:31 PM, John Turner wrote:
>>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2015 13:40:13 -0500, Mads Kiilerich
>>> <mads at kiilerich.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 12/29/2014 06:34 PM, John Turner wrote:
>>>>> Greetings,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm seeking some clarity on the mechanics and/or best-practices for
>>>>> implementation of hg notify, namely, which side of the execution chain
>>>>> should invoke the mail notification, given a local(n) <-->
>>>>> centralized(1) workflow.
>>>>> ..
> 
>>>>> .. My initial
>>>>> expectation was that the passive repo (i.e., the central repo) would
>>>>> invoke the mail notification, and thereby obviate the need to define a
>>>>> notify config for each local developer, but it appears that hg notify
>>>>> executes from the active repo only.
>>>> 
>>>> Correct, doing it on the central server makes more sense than doing it
>>>> on the "client" side.
>>>> 
>>>> The server side hg is however not "passive". The example in the
>>>> beginning of "hg help notify" shows how to use hooks that will be
>>>> invoked on the server side when a client push changes.
>>>> 
>>>> /Mads
>>> 
>>> Thanks for offering your advice on this Mads.
>>> 
>>> Hmm... so far no matter what I do, my client-side push does nothing to
>>> invoke the server-side hooks.
>> 
>> Then you have to debug your server side setup.
>> 
>> I don't think you have told us anything about your server side setup so
>> any advice will probably be wrong.
>> 
>> /Mads
> 
> The the canonical central repo exists on a Windows 2008 R2 box.
> The directory owner of the central repo is a shared domain account: 'companydomain\devadmin'
> (this is the account we normally rdp with to work directly in this server)
> 
> At the same time, I've added my personal domain account to the server-side Administrators group, and I've also added my account as a share on the actual server-side repo directory (allowing me to map it on my local machine, and generally to perform source control operations between my local repo and the server repo without running hgweb).
> 
> The directory owner of my local repo is "Administrators" (as opposed to the shared domain account referenced above, which I suspect may be part of the issue..)
> 
> Interestingly, when I enable the notify hook on my local machine, and push from the rdp-connected server (with server-side notify disabled), it DOES send the email - and returns the changegroup hook when I run 'hg showconfig hooks' from the server's CLI.
> 
> However, the converse is not true - 'hg showconfig hooks' run on my local machine CLI with notify locally disabled, and server-side notify enabled yields nothing.  At the same time 'hg showconfig hooks' run on the server-side CLI via rdp returns the changegroup hook reference.
> 
> So I'm 3 for 4:
> - local notify enabled and local push to central sends email
> - central notify enabled and central push to local sends email
> - local notify enabled and central push to local sends email
> 
> ..and trying to solve for central notify enabled and local push to central.
> 
> Hope that gives enough background for anyone and isn't too confusing.
> 
> Cheers,
> John
> 

How are you enabling and configuring the notify extension on the server? In the repository’s hgrc file, or in a different config file? Your original mail mentioned “mercurial.ini”, which suggests that you’re configuring this in the config file for a *user* on the server (eg. C:\Users\devadmin\mercurial.ini).

If you are pushing to a repository on a mapped network drive, then as far as mercurial is concerned this is a “local” push. There is only a single “hg” process running (as opposed to pushing over http or ssh, where there are 2 hg processes running). The user account that owns the remote repository is not particularly relevant - mercurial is simply performing filesystem operations directly in the repository. Mercurial doesn’t even need to be installed on the server for this to work.

However, this also means that mercurial won’t load a user config file from the remote server. The only config file it will read from the server will be the one inside the repository itself, at <repo>/.hg/hgrc. This is where you would need to configure the notify extension.

In this configuration, it is still your client-side hg process which is actually loading the extension and sending the email. If you need the email to be sent by the server, then you need to be connecting to an hg process running on the server, either via ssh or http (hgweb).

Hope that helps,

Simon