view mercurial/help/pager.txt @ 32924:f044295cdb7a

repair: move check for existing transaction earlier

Several benefits:

 * Gets close the comment describing it
 * Splits off unrelated comment about "backup" argument
 * Error checking is customarily done early
 * If we added an early return to the method, it would still
   consistently fail if there was an existing transaction (so
   we would find and fix that case quickly)

One test needs updating with for this change, because we no longer
create the backup bundle before we fail. I don't see much reason to
create that backup bundle. If some command was adding content and then
trying to strip it as well within the transaction, we would have a
backup for the user, but the risk of that not being discovered in
development seems very small.

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.