What are the best and must-have hg / mercurial extensions? [closed]

Answer 1

My list:

1. graphlog. I use it much more than hg log. (wish it could restrict to branches)

2. purge. remove all files not in Mercurial. I use this instead of or as a cleaner version of make clean.

Less used, but nice:

• children (lets you say "hg children -r XXX")
• parentrevspec: lets you say stuff like "foo~2 = foo^1^1 = foo^^ = first parent of first parent of foo"

I keep trying to use the history editing tools, but keep running into limitations. I want them to work.

• collapse
• histedit
• I consider rebase a history editing tol as well

By the way, beware: hgk and fetch are "unloved": https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/UnlovedFeatures. But then, SubRepos are, not unloved, but a feature of last resort, and I use subrepos.

Answer 2

My own hit list:

The simple ones you must have:

1. color: colorize output from commands like diff and status, which makes it easier to assess.
2. pager: browse long output a page at a time.
3. fetch: pull, update and merge from another repo in one step.
4. graphlog: display revision graphs in your shell, incredibly useful for looking at the branches in your log history.
5. hgk: browse the repository with a graphical interface (see also TortoiseHg and Murky)

If you enable pager, you should configure it to not interfere with certain commands:

[pager]
pager = LESS='FSRX' less
ignore = version, help, update, serve, record

The intermediate extensions I highly recommend (and use frequently):

1. record: lets you interactively select hunks of files to commit - perfect for when you are in the middle of one set of changes, and you end up fixing something that should have its own commit.
2. extdiff: configure an external diff tool (such as meld)
3. share: have multiple clones use the same repo history

The Advanced extensions I would not be without:

1. mq: manage a stack of patches. Very powerful, allows layering of patches on top of the tree.
2. notify: send email notifications when a repo is changed.
3. rebase: reapply local changes on top of a new parent revision.
4. largefiles: work with large binary files outside the hg store

All the above are bundled with Mercurial, and are stable and well-tested. I highly recommend all of them.

Non-core extensions worth investigating:

1. shelve: selectively put aside changes (at the granularity of hunks) and restore them.
2. acl: selectively allow access to different parts of the repository tree

Superseded extensions and migrated to core (info from @durin42):

• forest was been superseded by the subrepo support introduced in v1.3
• bookmarks is in core and always enabled
• transplant is superseded by graft, a core command
• histedit is in core as of v2.3, but is disabled by default
• inotify is not recommended, as there is apparently a bug due to a race condition

Answer 3

graphlog and mq are especially tasty.

1. Convert: convert to and from other systems
2. Mq (Mercurial Queues): deal with changes as a stack of patches
3. Forest: lets you commit to and update many nested Mercurial repositories at once
4. Share: to save time and disk space when working with similar repositories
5. Hgk: gives a graphical view of history
6. Graphlog: I always type 'hg glog' not 'hg log'. An ascii art view of history
7. Transplant: Useful when you only want to merge a few changesets from another branch. The newer hg rebase may have some overlap.
8. Rebase: A different way to deal with changes as a set of changesets on top of a branch. git users like to rebase. May replace mq for many use cases.
9. Shelve: A place to stash the working copy's changes if you have to work on something else for a while.
10. Bookmarks: Name the newest commit on a particular branch. Similar to git branches.

Answer 4

If you're working with a slowish host like Bitbucket, progress is essential. Otherwise hg push looks like it's hung :\

Answer 5

Not yet mentioned: mercurial_keyring

https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/KeyringExtension

"Keyring extension uses services of the keyring library to securely save authentication passwords (HTTP/HTTPS and SMTP) using system specific password database (Gnome Keyring, KDE KWallet, OSXKeyChain, dedicated solutions for Win32 and command line)."

I use ssh to access my repos on GitHub and Bitbucket, and my keyphrase is held in the keychain. This extension lets Mercurial get it whenever needed.

Also required for me: hg-git

http://hg-git.github.com/

Mercurial plugin letting you pull and push git repos using hg as a client. Use it all the time.