Announcing Mercurial sprint in London, May 27-29th#
We are happy to announce that we will be holding a Mercurial sprint in London, UK from May 27th to 29th 2026.
This sprint is intended for a wider audience than the previous Grenoble mini-sprint. It aims for Mercurial and Heptapod users, developers and other actors in the version control field to gather and discuss their needs and help plan for the future.
To deal with diverse topics, the main focus will change over the three days:
Wednesday 27th will lean towards bootstrapping technical contribution and discussion of internal matters (tooling, policy, etc.) Thursday 28th and Friday 29th will gear toward higher-level discussions regarding usages, needs, overall direction of the project and collaboration opportunities with other tools.
The hosting venue will require attendance details by mid-May, so please fill the registration form in advance.
General Information#
Location
Jane Street Europe 2½, Devonshire Square, London EC2M 4UJ, United Kingdom
Date
May 27th, 28th and 29th
Opening hours
09:00 to 18:00 (including breakfast, catered lunch and tea time snacks)
Contact
Registration form
Detailed Program#
You can find the up-to-date list of tentative topics in our tracking issue.
Wednesday May 27th#
This first day should focus on more technical aspects of Mercurial and Heptapod. For example:
Helping aspiring developers to bootstrap their contributions, and occasional contributors to tackle larger issues
Developer experience, whether that’s tooling, processes and other technical policies, for example migrating from Black to Ruff
Technical discussions like internal design choices, deciding how to move forward on some bugs and features, bug triage, etc.
Discussions regarding the project’s governance and maintenance
Tackling some lesser-loved parts of Mercurial and its ecosystem. Last year in Grenoble we started and almost finished the wiki and bug tracker migration during such an effort
Other ecosystem related topics like packaging, compatibility decisions, etc.
As you probably figured out, if you are interested in the higher-level discussions, you can consider skipping that day.
We expect the efforts started on the first day to keep unfolding over the next two days, however that first day should take care of most general discussions and decision-making on technical aspects. That will free up the general attention for the other topics.
Thursday May 28th and Friday May 29th#
During the other two days, we will explore subjects for a more general public:
Presenting the current main development focus for Mercurial, its goals and its timelines in order to help users understand what is currently going on
Answering questions about Heptapod, its current state, its strategy and its future
Sharing user stories: What do you do with Mercurial? What are your pain points? What requirements would you like to see covered? The goal here is to better understand how Mercurial is currently used, the emerging use-cases and what the community needs next
Exchange with developers from other projects: what efforts can we share? What are the problems that everybody encounters? What are the solutions that Mercurial or its competitors could offer and how do they compare? There is a lot of movement in the space nowadays, and this renewed energy is a welcome sign that we can create a more diverse and stronger community
Discussions with people unhappy about their current source control solution. What makes their tools impractical? Could Mercurial fill the gap? What traps should we look out for?
In short, these two days will help core Mercurial and Heptapod developers to better understand the needs of the community, provide a clearer vision of where Mercurial is headed and ensure the project can move forward both faster and in the right direction.
Sponsoring#
Traveling and staying in London can be a significant expense. If these costs would prevent you from attending the sprint, check the associated box in the form while registering, as we might be able to sponsor a few people.
In order to do so, we need help from companies that are able to contribute. If you are willing to help independent contributors to attend, get in touch with us at contact@octobus.net.
Registration#
In order to better organize the event, you need to register two weeks in advance using the form. Note that, to make it easier for teams to join us, you can register on behalf of multiple people.
Please make sure that you have the required documents to travel to London for however long you are planning to stay.
As some of the details might change before the event, we encourage you to check back on this announcement in case there are any changes.
See you in London!