"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Wednesday 31 July 2013

Mercurial and Mercurial-server : playing with DVCS (part 1)

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.