GRAND GEMS: A Beginner's Tutorial on Mercurial

GRAND Seminar 4:00 pm, Sept. 24, Fri., 2010, ENGR 4201

Christopher Vo
Ph.D student
Computer Science
GMU

Abstract:

Mercurial is a free and powerful source code management (SCM) tool. Like traditional version control systems (e.g. Subversion, CVS), it offers the ability to track source code changes and synchronize them with other developers. However, Mercurial offers even more freedom and flexibility by adopting a distributed model. Through this distributed model, a multitude of different workflows are possible to support not only the needs of large development teams requiring security and control, but also lone developers requiring basic tracking and synchronization. This short talk introduces the distributed revision control model in Mercurial and how it can be used as a tool to ease everyday software development for both individuals and teams. While this tutorial is Mercurial-specific, the concepts easily apply to other popular distributed SCM tools available today, such as Git and Bazaar.