view mercurial/help/phases.txt @ 39814:d059cb669632

wireprotov2: allow multiple fields to follow revision maps

The *data wire protocol commands emit a series of CBOR values.
Because revision/delta data may be large, their data is emitted
outside the map as a top-level bytestring value.

Before this commit, we'd emit a single optional bytestring
value after the revision descriptor map. This got the job done.
But it was limiting in that we could only send a single field.
And, it required the consumer to know that the presence of a
key in the map implied the existence of a following bytestring
value.

This commit changes the encoding strategy so top-level bytestring
values in the stream are explicitly denoted in a "fieldsfollowing"
key. This key contains an array defining what fields that follow
and the expected size of each field.

By defining things this way, we can easily send N bytestring
values without any ambiguity about their order. In addition,
clients only need to know how to parse ``fieldsfollowing`` to
know if extra values are present.

Because this breaks backwards compatibility, we've bumped the version
number of the wire protocol version 2 API endpoint.

Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D4620

What are phases?
================

Phases are a system for tracking which changesets have been or should
be shared. This helps prevent common mistakes when modifying history
(for instance, with the mq or rebase extensions).

Each changeset in a repository is in one of the following phases:

 - public : changeset is visible on a public server
 - draft : changeset is not yet published
 - secret : changeset should not be pushed, pulled, or cloned

These phases are ordered (public < draft < secret) and no changeset
can be in a lower phase than its ancestors. For instance, if a
changeset is public, all its ancestors are also public. Lastly,
changeset phases should only be changed towards the public phase.

How are phases managed?
=======================

For the most part, phases should work transparently. By default, a
changeset is created in the draft phase and is moved into the public
phase when it is pushed to another repository.

Once changesets become public, extensions like mq and rebase will
refuse to operate on them to prevent creating duplicate changesets.
Phases can also be manually manipulated with the :hg:`phase` command
if needed. See :hg:`help -v phase` for examples.

To make your commits secret by default, put this in your
configuration file::

  [phases]
  new-commit = secret

Phases and servers
==================

Normally, all servers are ``publishing`` by default. This means::

 - all draft changesets that are pulled or cloned appear in phase
 public on the client

 - all draft changesets that are pushed appear as public on both
 client and server

 - secret changesets are neither pushed, pulled, or cloned

.. note::

  Pulling a draft changeset from a publishing server does not mark it
  as public on the server side due to the read-only nature of pull.

Sometimes it may be desirable to push and pull changesets in the draft
phase to share unfinished work. This can be done by setting a
repository to disable publishing in its configuration file::

  [phases]
  publish = False

See :hg:`help config` for more information on configuration files.

.. note::

  Servers running older versions of Mercurial are treated as
  publishing.

.. note::

   Changesets in secret phase are not exchanged with the server. This
   applies to their content: file names, file contents, and changeset
   metadata. For technical reasons, the identifier (e.g. d825e4025e39)
   of the secret changeset may be communicated to the server.


Examples
========

 - list changesets in draft or secret phase::

     hg log -r "not public()"

 - change all secret changesets to draft::

     hg phase --draft "secret()"

 - forcibly move the current changeset and descendants from public to draft::

     hg phase --force --draft .

 - show a list of changeset revisions and each corresponding phase::

     hg log --template "{rev} {phase}\n"

 - resynchronize draft changesets relative to a remote repository::

     hg phase -fd "outgoing(URL)"

See :hg:`help phase` for more information on manually manipulating phases.