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1 \chapter{Managing change with Mercurial Queues}
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2 \label{chap:mq}
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3
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4 \section{The patch management problem}
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5 \label{sec:mq:patch-mgmt}
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6
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7 Here is a common scenario: you need to install a software package from
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8 source, but you find a bug that you must fix in the source before you
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9 can start using the package. You make your changes, forget about the
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10 package for a while, and a few months later you need to upgrade to a
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11 newer version of the package. If the newer version of the package
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12 still has the bug, you must extract your fix from the older source
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13 tree and apply it against the newer version. This is a tedious task,
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14 and it's easy to make mistakes.
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15
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16 This is a simple case of the ``patch management'' problem. You have
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17 an ``upstream'' source tree that you can't change; you need to make
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18 some local changes on top of the upstream tree; and you'd like to be
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19 able to keep those changes separate, so that you can apply them to
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20 newer versions of the upstream source.
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21
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22 The patch management problem arises in many situations. Probably the
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23 most visible is that a user of an open source software project will
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24 contribute a bugfix or new feature to the project's maintainers in the
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25 form of a patch.
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26
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27 Distributors of operating systems that include open source software
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28 often need to make changes to the packages they distribute so that
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29 they will build properly in their environments.
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30
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31 When you have few changes to maintain, it is easy to manage a single
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32 patch using the standard \texttt{diff} and \texttt{patch} programs.
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33 Once the number of changes grows, it starts to makes sense to maintain
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34 patches as discrete ``chunks of work,'' so that for example a single
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35 patch will contain only one bug fix (the patch might modify several
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36 files, but it's doing ``only one thing''), and you may have a number
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37 of such patches for different bugs you need fixed and local changes
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38 you require. In this situation, if you submit a bugfix patch to the
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39 upstream maintainers of a package and they include your fix in a
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40 subsequent release, you can simply drop that single patch when you're
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41 updating to the newer release.
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42
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43 Maintaining a single patch against an upstream tree is a little
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44 tedious and error-prone, but not difficult. However, the complexity
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45 of the problem grows rapidly as the number of patches you have to
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46 maintain increases. With more than a tiny number of patches in hand,
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47 understanding which ones you have applied and maintaining them moves
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48 from messy to overwhelming.
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49
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50 Fortunately, Mercurial includes a powerful extension, Mercurial Queues
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51 (or simply ``MQ''), that massively simplifies the patch management
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52 problem.
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53
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54 \section{The prehistory of Mercurial Queues}
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55 \label{sec:mq:history}
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56
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57 During the late 1990s, several Linux kernel developers started to
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58 maintain ``patch series'' that modified the behaviour of the Linux
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59 kernel. Some of these series were focused on stability, some on
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60 feature coverage, and others were more speculative.
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61
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62 The sizes of these patch series grew rapidly. In 2002, Andrew Morton
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63 published some shell scripts he had been using to automate the task of
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64 managing his patch queues. Andrew was successfully using these
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65 scripts to manage hundreds (sometimes thousands) of patches on top of
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66 the Linux kernel.
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67
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68 \subsection{A patchwork quilt}
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69 \label{sec:mq:quilt}
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70
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71
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72 In early 2003, Andreas Gruenbacher and Martin Quinson borrowed the
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73 approach of Andrew's scripts and published a tool called
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74 \href{http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt}{``patchwork quilt''},
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75 or simply ``quilt''. Because quilt substantially automated patch
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76 management, it rapidly gained a large following among open source
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77 software developers.
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78
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79 Quilt manages a \emph{stack of patches} on top of a directory tree.
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80 To begin, you tell quilt to manage a directory tree; it stores away
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81 the names and contents of all files in the tree. To fix a bug, you
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82 create a new patch (using a single command), edit the files you need
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83 to fix, then ``refresh'' the patch.
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84
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85 The refresh step causes quilt to scan the directory tree; it updates
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86 the patch with all of the changes you have made. You can create
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87 another patch on top of the first, which will track the changes
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88 required to modify the tree from ``tree with one patch applied'' to
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89 ``tree with two patches applied''.
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90
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91 You can \emph{change} which patches are applied to the tree. If you
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92 ``pop'' a patch, the changes made by that patch will vanish from the
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93 directory tree. Quilt remembers which patches you have popped,
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94 though, so you can ``push'' a popped patch again, and the directory
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95 tree will be restored to contain the modifications in the patch. Most
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96 importantly, you can run the ``refresh'' command at any time, and the
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97 topmost applied patch will be updated. This means that you can, at
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98 any time, change both which patches are applied and what
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99 modifications those patches make.
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100
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101 Quilt knows nothing about revision control tools, so it works equally
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102 well on top of an unpacked tarball or a Suversion repository.
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103
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104 \subsection{From patchwork quilt to Mercurial Queues}
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105 \label{sec:mq:quilt-mq}
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106
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107 In mid-2005, Chris Mason took the features of quilt and wrote an
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108 extension that he called Mercurial Queues, which added quilt-like
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109 behaviour to Mercurial.
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110
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111 The key difference between quilt and MQ is that quilt knows nothing
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112 about revision control systems, while MQ is \emph{integrated} into
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113 Mercurial. Each patch that you push is represented as a Mercurial
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114 changeset. Pop a patch, and the changeset goes away.
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115
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116 This integration makes understanding patches and debugging their
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117 effects \emph{enormously} easier. Since every applied patch has an
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118 associated changeset, you can use \hgcmdargs{log}{\emph{filename}} to
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119 see which changesets and patches affected a file. You can use the
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120 \hgext{bisect} extension to binary-search through all changesets and
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121 applied patches to see where a bug got introduced or fixed. You can
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122 use the \hgcmd{annotate} command to see which changeset or patch
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123 modified a particular line of a source file. And so on.
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124
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125 Because quilt does not care about revision control tools, it is still
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126 a tremendously useful piece of software to know about for situations
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127 where you cannot use Mercurial and MQ.
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128 \section{Section!}
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129 \label{sec:sec}
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130
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131 Section!
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132
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133 %%% Local Variables:
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134 %%% mode: latex
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135 %%% TeX-master: "00book"
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136 %%% End:
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