OpenSolaris

Heads up: Mercurial: What to expect: Keywords, Deleting files, Trust errors

Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:51:21 -0600
From: "Mark J. Nelson" <Mark.J.Nelson at sun dot com>
To: on-discuss at opensolaris dot org
Subject: Heads up: Mercurial: What to expect: Keywords, Deleting files, Trust errors

This is really three short notes rolled into one.

Part 1, Remove SCCS keywords

As Steve described in a heads up note [1] one year ago, user-visible SCCS
keywords are going away.

Because, really, how informative is the string "%I%" to most users?

We (the SCM Migration project team and several other subject matter
experts in various areas) are working on bugs to get rid of all of the
non-ident keywords usage.  Some of those bug fixes are already integrated,
some are coming this evening, many will be part of the SCM project wad
tomorrow morning, and it looks like a couple of the larger wads will hit
later this week.

But that's beside the point.  What you need to know is that you should get
rid of all SCCS keywords, including any "ident" lines, in any file you
push to the Mercurial gate.

Val also describes this in the RTI Nits page [2]. And you would never push
without following the guidelines there, would you?

Part 2, Stop using deleted_files

Henceforth, if you delete a file from ON using Mercurial, you should use
the "hg rm" command.  Do not reintroduce "deleted_files," that was a
Teamware thing, and it's going away.

Part 3, Don't trust arbitrary users

Because an hgrc file can be associated with a repository, as well as with
a user, and hgrc files can be used to specify arbitrary code to run via
Mercurial hooks or extensions, Mercurial has a builtin concept of "trust."

If you access a repository that is NOT owned by your login/group,
Mercurial will give you an error like this:

> Not trusting file /net/elpaso.eng/export/gate-hg/.hg/hgrc from untrusted
> user daemon, group other

This warning means exactly what it says, and it's really a good idea.

You have three different options for dealing with this:

1. Ignore it.  It's harmless, as long as the remote repository isn't
     trying to enforce mandatory gate hooks.  And it shouldn't be, unless
     you've also setup some controlled access.

2. If you have control over it and don't need one, don't setup a .hg/hgrc
     file in your remote repository.

3. If you must have a remote .hg/hgrc, and you cannot ignore this message,
     you can put a [trusted] section into your own .hgrc.  See hgrc(5) for
     details.

That's it for this evening.  More tomorrow.

~--Mark

[1] http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/on/flag-days/pages/2007080101/
[2] http://opensolaris.org/os/community/on/crt/rti-nits/