GitMinutes #07: Martin Geisler on Mercurial

In this episode, we talk to Martin Geisler, a long time contributor to the Mercurial project.


Link to mp3


Martin is a software developer since 15 years, focusing mainly on Python. I met him at a conference some years back where I talked about Git-SVN, and he talked about Mercurial, and we got to have some really interesting discussions on Git vs Mercurial, some of which we were able to recreate for recording this episode.

Links and resources from the show:

• Martin's homepage (redirects to his Google+ account at the time of writing)
• The two frameworks Martin mentioned for Python development:
• Pyramid 
• SQL Alchemy 
• Mercurial 
• Steve Losh's Git Koans 
• Steve Losh explaining the diff between Mercurial and Git
• CodePlex announced Mercurial support 
• Bitbucket announced Git support 
• Google Code announces Git support 
• Announcing Kiln Harmony 
• Facebook's discussion on the Git mailing list 
• Mercurial/Git integration with HgGit 
• JavaHG 
• Mercurial's Command Server 
• Mercurial Phases 
• Mercurial Changeset Evolution 

Some other useful things we didn't talk about:

• Hints for would-be Mercurial power users 
• Revision sets and file sets (built-in query languages that let you select revisions and files)
• Mercurial for Git users

Finally, new users might find a minimal ~/.hgrc file with my favorite extensions useful:

[ui]
username = Your Name <[email protected]>

[extensions]
# Color output and show progress bars in your terminal
color =
progress =

# Pipe output into a pager
pager =


# Enable 'hg rebase' and 'hg pull --rebase'
rebase =

# Enable 'hg histedit', like 'git rebase -i'
histedit =

# Enable 'hg record', like 'git add -i; git commit'
record =

[pager]
# Set $PAGER or specify the pager to use here: 
pager = less -FRX

Listen to the episode on YouTube