A quick intro to Mercurial Revision control system

This post is for all the developers who are using revision control systems like CVS to use Mercurial. This post just contains a few brief descriptions and urls from where more information can be found about using the mercurial

Ok so lets get started.

Few FAQ which will make you familiar with the terminologies used in mercurial.

What is tortoiseHg?

This is a windows version of Mercurial. It is like tortoise for CVS.

Ok fine, but then what is Mercurial?

It is a revision control system just like CVS

And what is Hg?

Its the chemistry name of Mercurial :-)

Something to know for developers who are on Mac 

What is Ticke(TCL)?

Tools command language is a scripting command language like ruby

What is macport(s)?

Macport is a command line package distribution tool just like ruby gem for Mac.

From where can I install mercurial on my machine?

For windows: download the latest version from http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/Home

For Mac OS-X: Install it from http://mercurial.berkwood.com/

Ok, how can i get started with mercurial once i have installed it?

Installing mercurial is just like creating any new directory in your machine which contains all the version control information.

To create a hg repository

hg init myproject

This will create a new repository call myproject

Go inside this and copy any file you want to provide versioning with.

To add the file to the repository

hg add

This will add the copied file to the repository

To check the status of the added file

hg status

To commit changes

hg commit -m 'initial commit'

Detailed instructions can be found at the link below

http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/a-tour-of-mercurial-the-basics.html