Cloning to a downgraded repository - examples don't seem to work

[Anton Shestakov]

03.01.2024 08:50, Chris Green пишет:
> I want to clone this repository so that I can use it with some older
> versions of mercurial that don't have share-safe, so I did:-
> 
>      hg --config format.share-safe=0 clone --pull .cfg .newcfg

The config option you're looking for is `format.use-share-safe`.

If you saw `format.share-safe` somewhere in the docs, then we need to 
fix them.

> While I'm about it can someone explain what the --pull option does in
> the above command please.

In short, it works by using exchange protocol (so kind of like pulling 
the source repo into an empty clone), as opposed to using faster cloning 
methods like file copy or hardlinks. It's required for some format 
conversions that change data on-disk like different compression 
algorithms or storage formats (although it's probably not needed for 
safe-share?).

Since hg clone --pull will repack the data during exchange even if you 
didn't change any compression/storage-related options, you might indeed 
see a difference in size between the source repo and the clone.

Usually I'd say the resulting clone should be smaller because of newer 
storage defaults and compression tweaks, so it's normal to see an 
improvement there.

Depending on your goal and curiosity you might also find `hg 
debugformat` command interesting.