annotate README.rst @ 36958:644a02f6b34f

util: prefer "bytesio" to "stringio"

The io.BytesIO and io.StringIO types enforce the type of
data being operated on. On Python 2, we use cStringIO.StringIO(),
which is lax about mixing types. On Python 3, we actually use
io.BytesIO. Ideally, we'd use io.BytesIO on Python 2. But I believe
its performance is poor compared to cString.StringIO().

Anyway, we canonically define our pycompat type as "stringio."
That name is misleading, especially on Python 3.

This commit renames the canonical symbols to "bytesio."
"stringio" is preserved as an alias for API compatibility. There
are a lot of callers in the repo and I hesitate to take away the
old name. I also don't feel like changing everything at this time.
But at least new callers can use a "proper" name.

Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D2868

Mercurial
=========

Mercurial is a fast, easy to use, distributed revision control tool
for software developers.

Basic install::

 $ make            # see install targets
 $ make install    # do a system-wide install
 $ hg debuginstall # sanity-check setup
 $ hg              # see help

Running without installing::

 $ make local      # build for inplace usage
 $ ./hg --version  # should show the latest version

See https://mercurial-scm.org/ for detailed installation
instructions, platform-specific notes, and Mercurial user information.