comparison mercurial/help.py @ 7293:3549659450e6

help: add a topic on git diffs (issue1352)

7292:1493d1e05ca3

    order.

    A range acts as a closed interval. This means that a range of 3:5
    gives 3, 4 and 5. Similarly, a range of 4:2 gives 4, 3, and 2.
    ''')),
)

7293:3549659450e6

    order.

    A range acts as a closed interval. This means that a range of 3:5
    gives 3, 4 and 5. Similarly, a range of 4:2 gives 4, 3, and 2.
    ''')),

    (['gitdiffs'], _('Using git Diffs'),
     _(r'''
    In several places, Mercurial supports two separate variations on
    the unified diff format: normal diffs, as are de facto standardized
    by GNU's patch utility, and git diffs, invented for the git VCS.

    The git diff format is an addition of some information to the normal
    diff format, which allows diff to convey changes in file permissions
    as well as the creation, deletion, renaming and copying of files, as
    well as diffs for binary files (unsupported by standard diff),
    operations which are very useful to modern version control systems
    such as Mercurial, in trying to faithfully replay your changes.

    In building Mercurial, we made a choice to support the git diff
    format, but we haven't made it the default. This is because for a
    long time, the format for unified diffs we usually use has been 
    defined by GNU patch, and it doesn't (yet) support git's extensions
    to the diff format. This means that, when extracting diffs from a
    Mercurial repository (through the diff command, for example), you
    must be careful about things like file copies and renames (file
    creation and deletion are mostly handled fine by the traditional
    diff format, with some rare edge cases for which the git extensions
    can be used). Mercurial's internal operations (like push and pull)
    are not affected by these differences, because they use a different,
    binary format for communicating changes.

    To use git diffs, use the --git option for relevant commands, or
    enable them in a hgrc, setting 'git = True' in the [diff] section.
    ''')),
)