How to use Mercurial?

[Warren Postma]

Hello Jon,

*We have a "central" hg repository, and then various checked out copies
in which we work on various projects. Different projects may push
things back to the central repository at various times.*

If you're used to a centralized system (any classic VCS like CVS and SVN)
then decentralized systems will appear needlessly complex, because they
permit something, and encourage something, which you find "not the right
thing".

It was precisely my mindset, until my own experience beat it out of me.  I
find that my experience was shared by many many others. That Joel guy found
the same thing -- see http://hginit.com/ and read the parts for refugees
from centralized version control systems (svn and cvs).

It sounds to me like you have the following situation:

1. More than one project (set of source code or input files) per repository.
This is a rather un-mercurial style.

2. Only one local working copy (also rather un-mercurial, I think).


You prefer everybody work from the latest source code, perhaps to reduce
merging. And then if you expect each developer to be most comfortable using
only one working copy, of each set of source code, then you end up in the
"mashup" mode you describe.

It sounds to me like you're expecting a DVCS (distributed) to be less D, and
more C (centralized).   What if your individual developers have two local
working copies, at a minimum:

a.  My Pile Of Doggie Doo.

b.  My Copy of the Central Pile of Doggie Doo.

And then I move from pile A to pile B when I feel like merging, but not when
I don't.

Am I understanding you?



Warren
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