view mercurial/help/diffs.txt @ 25596:c1975809a6b5

templater: take any string literals as template, but not for rawstring (BC)

This patch series is intended to unify the interpretation of string literals.
It is breaking change that boldly assumes

 a. string literal "..." never contains template-like fragment or it is
    intended to be a template
 b. we tend to use raw string literal r"..." for regexp pattern in which "{"
    should have different meaning

Currently, we don't have a comprehensible rule how string literals are
evaluated in template functions. For example, fill() takes "initialindent"
and "hangindent" as templates, but not for "text", whereas "text" is a
template in pad() function.

  date(date, fmt)
  diff(includepattern, excludepattern)
  fill(text, width, initialident: T, hangindent: T)
  get(dict, key)
  if(expr, then: T, else: T)
  ifcontains(search, thing, then: T, else: T)
  ifeq(expr1, expr2, then: T, else: T)
  indent(text, indentchars, firstline)
  join(list, sep)
  label(label: T, expr: T)
  pad(text: T, width, fillchar, right)
  revset(query, formatargs...])
  rstdoc(text, style)
  shortest(node, minlength)
  startswith(pattern, text)
  strip(text, chars)
  sub(pattern, replacement, expression: T)
  word(number, text, separator)
  expr % template: T

  T: interpret "string" or r"rawstring" as template

This patch series adjusts the rule as follows:

 a. string literal, '' or "", starts template processing (BC)
 b. raw string literal, r'' or r"", disables both \-escape and template
    processing (BC, done by subsequent patches)
 c. fragment not surrounded by {} is non-templated string

  "ccc{'aaa'}{r'bbb'}"
   ------------------  *: template
   ---                 c: string
        ---            a: template
                ---    b: rawstring

Because this can eliminate the compilation of template arguments from the
evaluation phase, "hg log -Tdefault" gets faster.

  % cd mozilla-central
  % LANG=C HGRCPATH=/dev/null hg log -Tdefault -r0:10000 --time > /dev/null
  before: real 4.870 secs (user 4.860+0.000 sys 0.010+0.000)
  after:  real 3.480 secs (user 3.440+0.000 sys 0.030+0.000)

Also, this will allow us to parse nested templates at once for better error
indication.

Mercurial's default format for showing changes between two versions of
a file is compatible with the unified format of GNU diff, which can be
used by GNU patch and many other standard tools.

While this standard format is often enough, it does not encode the
following information:

- executable status and other permission bits
- copy or rename information
- changes in binary files
- creation or deletion of empty files

Mercurial also supports the extended diff format from the git VCS
which addresses these limitations. The git diff format is not produced
by default because a few widespread tools still do not understand this
format.

This means that when generating diffs from a Mercurial repository
(e.g. with :hg:`export`), you should be careful about things like file
copies and renames or other things mentioned above, because when
applying a standard diff to a different repository, this extra
information is lost. Mercurial's internal operations (like push and
pull) are not affected by this, because they use an internal binary
format for communicating changes.

To make Mercurial produce the git extended diff format, use the --git
option available for many commands, or set 'git = True' in the [diff]
section of your configuration file. You do not need to set this option
when importing diffs in this format or using them in the mq extension.