README

aliases: provide more flexible ways to work with shell alias arguments

This patch changes the functionality of shell aliases to add more powerful
options for working with shell alias arguments.

First: the alias name + arguments to a shell alias are set as an HG_ARGS
environment variable, delimited by spaces. This matches the behavior of hooks.

Second: any occurrences of "$@" (without quotes) are replaced with the
arguments, separated by spaces. This happens *before* the alias gets to the shell.

Third: any positive numeric variables ("$1", "$2", etc) are replaced with the
appropriate argument, indexed from 1. "$0" is replaced with the name of the
alias. Any "extra" numeric variables are replaced with an empty string.  This
happens *before* the alias gets to the shell.

These changes allow for more flexible shell aliases:

    [alias]
    echo = !echo $@
    count = !hg log -r "$@" --template='.' | wc -c | sed -e 's/ //g'
    qqueuemv = !mv "`hg root`/.hg/patches-$1" "`hg root`/.hg/patches-$2"

In action:

    $ hg echo foo
    foo

    $ hg count 'branch(default)'
    901

    $ hg count 'branch(stable) and keyword(fixes)'
    102

    $ hg qqueuemv myfeature somefeature

Basic install:

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

See http://mercurial.selenic.com/ for detailed installation
instructions, platform-specific notes, and Mercurial user information.