mercurial/help/pager.txt
author Boris Feld <boris.feld@octobus.net>
Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:53:00 +0200
changeset 34880 9e18ab7f7240
parent 32608 85b978031a75
permissions -rw-r--r--
sparse-read: move from a recursive-based approach to a heap-based one The previous recursive approach was trying to optimise each read slice to have a good density. It had the tendency to over-optimize smaller slices while leaving larger hole in others. The new approach focuses on improving the combined density of all the reads, instead of the individual slices. It slices at the largest gaps first, as they reduce the total amount of read data the most efficiently. Another benefit of this approach is that we iterate over the delta chain only once, reducing the overhead of slicing long delta chains. On the repository we use for tests, the new approach shows similar or faster performance than the current default linear full read. The repository contains about 450,000 revisions with many concurrent topological branches. Tests have been run on two versions of the repository: one built with the current delta constraint, and the other with an unlimited delta span (using 'experimental.maxdeltachainspan=0') Below are timings for building 1% of all the revision in the manifest log using 'hg perfrevlogrevisions -m'. Times are given in seconds. They include the new couple of follow-up changeset in this series. delta-span standard unlimited linear-read 922s 632s sparse-read 814s 566s

Some Mercurial commands can produce a lot of output, and Mercurial will
attempt to use a pager to make those commands more pleasant.

To set the pager that should be used, set the application variable::

  [pager]
  pager = less -FRX

If no pager is set in the user or repository configuration, Mercurial uses the
environment variable $PAGER. If $PAGER is not set, pager.pager from the default
or system configuration is used. If none of these are set, a default pager will
be used, typically `less` on Unix and `more` on Windows.

.. container:: windows

  On Windows, `more` is not color aware, so using it effectively disables color.
  MSYS and Cygwin shells provide `less` as a pager, which can be configured to
  support ANSI color codes.  See :hg:`help config.color.pagermode` to configure
  the color mode when invoking a pager.

You can disable the pager for certain commands by adding them to the
pager.ignore list::

  [pager]
  ignore = version, help, update

To ignore global commands like :hg:`version` or :hg:`help`, you have
to specify them in your user configuration file.

To control whether the pager is used at all for an individual command,
you can use --pager=<value>:

  - use as needed: `auto`.
  - require the pager: `yes` or `on`.
  - suppress the pager: `no` or `off` (any unrecognized value
    will also work).

To globally turn off all attempts to use a pager, set::

  [ui]
  paginate = never

which will prevent the pager from running.