[Python-apps-team] Bug#525319: Please add mercurial (hg) support

[Goswin von Brederlow]

Joey Hess <joeyh at debian.org> writes:

> Goswin Brederlow wrote:
>> Please add mercurial (hg) support to pristine-tar.
>
> Since this requires a good deep knowledge of each VCS, and I only know
> two well enough[1] personally, I'd need help to do that.
>
> The sort of thing that would be useful is if you can manually generate
> some pristine-tar deltas, and figure out the best way to store them in a
> mercurial repo, and send instructions / examples of doing just that,
> manually, and also of how pristine-tar can extract a delta from the repo
> later, as well as a good clear explanation of why the way you chose
> is the Best Way for mercurial.
>
> -- 
> see shy jo
>
> [1] git and svn, but all my svn knowledge says "it will suck to support svn"

I think hg can be done the same way git is done.

Create a pristine-tar branch and store package_version.orig.tar.gz.delta
and package_version.orig.tar.gz.id files there.

For checkout "git show" becomes "hg cat -r pristine-tar <file>".

For commit there is some BIG MAGIC being done for git to sneek in the
new files without disrupting the working dir. No idea what the
respective mercurial procedure would look like. Manually I would
switch branches, generate the files, add them, commit and switch back.

Maybe the best thing would be to clone the repository to a tempdir,
add the files there and push them back. Have to try that.

MfG
        Goswin

PS: I've CCed the mercurial maintainer team. Maybe someone there is
interested or can help.