Instant Mercurial Distributed SCM Essentials How-to

In Detail

A version control system provides a central repository to effectively coordinate and collaborate the work of a software development team. Mercurial is one of the most powerful and portable distributed version control systems currently available and is also fully free software. Most importantly, it provides a smooth transition for developers knowing CVS or Subversion's command set.

Instant Mercurial Distributed SCM Essentials How-to will help you in exploring the basics as well as some of Mercurial's most advanced features, such as extensions, hooks, conflict resolution, and so on through a comprehensive set of recipes. It quickly takes you through the process of creating a simple centralized software configuration workflow and continuous integration practice. If you are a software developer already familiar to version control but new to the Mercurial open source distributed VCS, this book is a great place to start.

Instant Mercurial Distributed SCM Essentials How-to begins with taking you through the tool installation and configuration and the most standard version control tasks, either for working locally or with a team through a series of easy-to-perform practical recipes.

Furthermore, this book will help you understand several tasks related to configuration management such as branching, merging, or solving conflicts and advanced tool usage; how to set up a web interface, to find when a bug was introduced, to enforce rules, to work with patches, or to set up a bidirectional gateway to another VCS.

Using a practical format of easy-to-perform recipes, Instant Mercurial SCM Essentials How-to leverages the simplicity and power of Mercurial to help you be more efficient and productive.

Approach

Filled with practical, step-by-step instructions and clear explanations for the most important and useful tasks. This book has a simplified, recipe-based approach, which shows the essential features of Mercurial SCM for software configuration engineers/programmers using Mercurial or another version control system of a similar kind.

Who this book is for

Instant Mercurial SCM Essentials How-to is aimed at software developers already familiar with version control but new to the Mercurial open source DVCS, who want to master both the basics and some very advanced features of the tool. You are expected to be familiar at either working with the console in Windows, or the Unix command line in Linux or Mac OS X, as the examples are command-line based.