view help/diffs.txt @ 9539:c904e76e3834

help: move help topics from mercurial/help.py to help/*.txt

The help topics are loaded on demand so we wont hit the disk unless we
really have to.

    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 hgrc. You do not need to set this
    option when importing diffs in this format or using them in the mq
    extension.