[PATCH 1 of 4] help: adding a new help topic about extensions

Cedric Duval cedricduval at free.fr
Sun Jun 21 03:16:28 CDT 2009


Hi,

thanks for your remarks, I'll post an update sortly integrating those.
Just a few points...

timeless wrote:
> > +    To enable an extension "foo" bundled with Mercurial, create an
> > +    entry for it your hgrc, like this:

> I reference to hg help for hgrc would probably be a good idea :)

> And to the conversation about how to find it, hg help hgrc doesn't work,

No there is not (a plain 'hg help' will give you the list of available
additionaly topics).

You may be right that throughout the documentation we make too much
assumptions about the user knowing about the configuration files.

What you are looking for here is 'man 5 hgrc'. While it may be nice
to have a topic on the config files ('config' or 'hgrc'?), I can not
think of a way to sum this information up, that would not take a
shipload of screens.

Or perhaps it would just provide general information about config
files, where they are looked for and with which precedence, and
for the rest, simply direct the user to the relevant documentation?

Anyway, a less confusing formulation or a contribution to that other
topic are welcome. :)

> having played with git recently, it's the only command I tried,
> and at this point, I give up :).

You tried to get help about the hgrc from git? *grin*

> > +        doc += _('\nnon-enabled extensions:\n\n')

> I'd rather "available extensions" if you're looking for terse, I'll
> note that your help text didn't use "non-enabled" (it's awkward), if
> you want a word, it's "disabled".

Well, I had thought about your other suggestions as well, but I ended
up not choosing them because:

 - available: yes, but enabled extensions are also 'available', this
   seems too general a formulation.

 - disabled: to me this implies an action/intent, ie they have been
   explicitely turned off. While here it is more their default state,
   they are not enabled _specifically because_ we did not do anything
   about them.

?

> > +    some usual behaviors of stock Mercurial. It is thus up to the

> note that you've used a slightly different string here than at the
> beginning, this doesn't help matters :(

> alter some...Mercurial => change Mercurial's behavior.

Yeah, I hate repetitions. But you may be right that consistency is
more important.

> > +    of broader scope, prepend its path with !:

> i sure hope "of broader scope" is defined somewhere :)

As we said above, not really, but we can find solutions. :)
-- 
Cédric


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