Using Mercurial, how to see History and Log on other Repos

Question

Let's say the repo I have on my notebook's hard drive is cloned from a remote Repo2 initially, the "all serious" Repo, and then we use Repo1 for tmp storage and code sharing.

So now, what if I do a

hg in ssh://[email protected]//code/repo1

and then also on repo2, and see some new changesets on both repos, how do I look at what Peter changed for the 3 files he committed and pushed on Repo1?

And how to do it for Repo2? (on Mac and PC)

What about just looking at the log history?

Is it better that Repo1 and Repo2 both run a process "hg serve" at port 8000 and 8001 for other people to look at history using a web browser?

What if there are no such processes running, then the only way is to ssh to that host and cd to the directory and do hg log and hg diff?

Answer 1

Yes, you must have the repository on your local machine to be able to do hg log and all other commands. Mercurial is a distributed revision control system, and so you are expected to make a local clone before you work with a repository.

Setting up hg serve is a good alternative for when you need to quickly look at the history without cloning it first. But for command line operations, you should make a clone.