Version control systems (VCS)
are an indispensable tool when programming and sharing code even for
small groups. Even while programming alone, but on different
computers, a version control system could easily prove useful for
securely sharing code between desktop and laptop computer. I use
daily SVN, as version control while at work. For my homely
experiments, instead, I decided to install something different:
Mercurial, a distributed
version control system (DVCS).
Distributed version control systems, most famous are Git
and Mercurial, do not rely on a central server to keep the code
repository, in DVCS every developing computer keeps its own copy of
the repository. What interested me in DVCS was the capability to do
version control also when off-line and also, of course, the chance to
learn something new.
Installing Mercurial (command-line and
plugged-in)
Installing Mercurial command-line version it's quite
trivial:
sudo apt-get install mercurial
Both Eclipse and Netbeans offers their plug-ins to
interface with Mercurial. Netbeans plug-in is already provided with
version 7.3.1 I have installed on the EEEPC. On Eclipse,
desktop-side, installing the MercurialEclipse
plug-in has been as simple as selecting it from the Eclipse
Marketplace and following installation wizard.
