doc/README

copies: document hack for adding '' to set of dirs

The root directory is not normally added to 'dirs' instances (although
I think it should be). In copies.mergecopies, we call dirname() to get
the directory of a path and then check for containment in the 'dirs'
instances ('d1' and 'd2'). In order to easily handle files in the root
directory, '/' is added to d1/d2. This results in the empty string
being added to the sets, since what comes before the slash in '/' is
an empty string. This seems less than obvious, so let's document it.

Mercurial's documentation is kept in reStructuredText format, which is
a simple plain text format that's easy to read and edit:

  http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

It's also convertible to a variety of other formats including standard
UNIX man page format and HTML. You'll need to install Docutils:

  http://docutils.sourceforge.net/

Use the Makefile in this directory to generate the man and HTML pages.