content/blog/2010/08/a-git-users-guide-to-mercurial-queues.markdown @ 88f0e0d8b891

+++
title = "A Git User's Guide to Mercurial Queues"
snip = "MQ is git's index on steroids."
date = 2010-08-10T21:00:00Z
draft = false

+++

I've been using [Mercurial Queues][MQ] more and more lately. At the last
Mercurial sprint [Brendan Cully][brendan] said something that made me realize
that MQ behaves very much like a souped-up version of [git][]'s index.

I wanted to write a blog post about the similarities between the two concepts
so that git users could understand [Mercurial][]'s MQ extension a bit better
and see how it can take that concept even further than git does.

This post is *not* intended to be a guide to MQ's day-to-day commands — it's
simply trying to explain MQ in a way that git users might find more
understandable.  For a primer on MQ commands you can check out [the MQ chapter
in the hg book][mq-book].

[MQ]: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MqExtension
[brendan]: http://cs.ubc.ca/~brendan/
[git]: {{links.git}}
[Mercurial]: {{links.mercurial}}
[mq-book]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/managing-change-with-mercurial-queues.html

<div id="toc"></div>

Git Basics
----------

Let's take a few moments to review how git works so we're all on the same page
with our terminology.

When you're working with a git repository you have three "layers" to work with:

* The working directory
* The index
* The git repository

You use `git add` to shove changes from the working directory into the index
and `git commit` to shove changes from the index into the repository:

<img class="diagram" src="/media/images/blog/2010/08/git-basics.png" alt="Git Basics"/>

This is a very powerful model because it lets you build your changesets
piece-by-piece and commit them permanently only when you're ready.

Mercurial Basics
----------------

With basic, stock Mercurial you only have two "layers" to work with:

* The working directory
* The Mercurial repository

You use `hg commit` to shove changes from the working directory into the
repository:

<img class="diagram" src="/media/images/blog/2010/08/mercurial-basics.png" alt="Mercurial Basics"/>

This model doesn't give you as much flexibility in creating changesets as
git's does. You can use the [record extension][record] to get closer, but it's still
not the same.

[record]: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/RecordExtension

Let's take a look at MQ to see how it can give us everything git's index does
*and more.*

Using MQ with a Single Patch
----------------------------

The most basic way to use MQ is to create a single patch with `hg qnew NAME`.
You can make changes in your working directory and use `hg qrefresh` (or `hg
qrecord`) to put them into the patch. Once you're done with your patch and
ready for it to become a commit you can run `hg qfinish`:

<img class="diagram" src="/media/images/blog/2010/08/mq-one.png" alt="MQ with One Patch"/>

This looks a lot like the diagram of how git works, doesn't it?  MQ gives you an
"intermediate" area to put changes, similar to how git's index works.

Using MQ with Two (or More) Patches
-----------------------------------

This single "intermediate" area is where git stops.  For many workflows it's
enough, but if you want more power MQ has you covered.

MQ is called Mercurial *Queues* for a reason.  You can have more than one patch
in your queue, which means you can have multiple "intermediate" areas if you
need them.

For example: say you're adding a feature that requires some API changes to your
project.  You'd like to commit the changes to the API in one changeset, and the
changes to the interface in another changeset.  You can do this by creating two
patches with `hg qnew api-changes; hg qnew interface-changes`:

<img class="diagram" src="/media/images/blog/2010/08/mq-two.png" alt="MQ with Two Patches"/>

You can move back and forth between these patches with `hg qpop` and `hg
qpush`. If you're working on the interface and realize you forgot to make
a necessary change to the API you can:

* `hg qpop` the `interface-changes` patch to get to the `api-changes` patch.
* Make your API changes.
* `hg qrefresh` to put those changes into the `api-changes` patch.
* `hg qpush` to get back to work on the interface.

Using multiple patches is like having multiple git indexes to store related
changes until you're ready to commit them permanently.

Multiple Patch Queues
---------------------

What happens when you want to work on two features, each with two patches, at
the same time?  You *could* simply create four patches and let the second
feature live on top of the first, but there's a better way.

Mercurial 1.6 (I think) added the `hg qqueue` command, which lets you create
*multiple* patch queues, each one living in its own directory. That means you
can create a separate queue (with its own set of patches) with `hg qqueue -c
NAME` for each feature:

<img class="diagram" src="/media/images/blog/2010/08/mq-multiple.png" alt="MQ with Multiple Queues"/>

You can switch patch queues with `hg qqueue NAME`.  This gives you multiple
sets of "intermediate" areas like git's index to work with.  This is probably
not something you'll need very often, but it's there when you *do* need it.

You can see that MQ is already quite a bit more flexible than git's index, but
it has one more trick up its sleeve.

Versioned Patch Queues
----------------------

Let me prefix this section by saying: "You might think you need to use versioned
patch queues, but you probably don't."  Versioned queues can be tricky to wrap
your head around, but once you understand them you'll realize how powerful they
can be.

Let's pause a second to look at how MQ actually stores its patches.

When you create a new patch with `hg qnew interface-changes` Mercurial will
create a `patches` folder inside the `.hg` folder of your project.  Your new
patch is stored in a file inside that folder (along with some other metadata
files):

```text
yourproject/
|
+-- .hg/
|   |
|   +-- patches/
|   |   |
|   |   +-- api-changes
|   |   +-- interface-changes
|   |   `-- ... other MQ-related files ...
|   |
|   `-- ... other Mercurial-related files ...
|
`-- ... your project's files ...
```

When you create a new patch queue with `hg qqueue -c some-feature` Mercurial
creates a completely separate `patches-some-feature` folder in `.hg`:

```text
yourproject/
|
+-- .hg/
|   |
|   +-- patches/
|   |   |
|   |   +-- api-changes
|   |   +-- interface-changes
|   |   `-- ... other MQ-related files ...
|   |
|   +-- patches-some-feature/
|   |   |
|   |   +-- api-changes
|   |   +-- interface-changes
|   |   `-- ... other MQ-related files ...
|   |
|   `-- ... other mercurial-related files ...
|
`-- ... your project's files ...
```

These folders are normal filesystem folders. The patches inside them are
plain-text files.

This gives them a very important property:

**They can be turned into Mercurial repositories to track changes.**

Once you understand what this means, you should have several "oh my god"
moments where you realize several very interesting things:

* Not only can you have multiple sets of "intermediate" areas to work with, you
  can *version* them to keep track of the changes!
* You can share queues with other people with Mercurial's vanilla push/pull
  commands.
* You can collaborate with other people and merge your changes to these
  "intermediate" areas with Mercurial's vanilla push/pull/merge commands.
* You can `hg serve` these patch repositories so other people can see what your
  patches look like before they've been permanently committed to your project's
  repository.

Versioning patch queues means you can end up with a (hard to read) diagram like
this:

<img class="diagram" src="/media/images/blog/2010/08/mq-versioned.png" alt="Versioned Queues"/>

To facilitate working with versioned patch queues all Mercurial commands come
with a `--mq` option to apply the command to the queue repository instead of
the current one (so you don't need to `cd` to the queue repository all the
time).

Versioning patch queues is an *incredibly* powerful concept, and most of the
time you won't need it, but it's nice to have it when you do.

It's also nice to know that [BitBucket][] has [special support][] for version
patch queues.

[BitBucket]: http://bitbucket.org/
[special support]: http://ches.nausicaamedia.com/articles/technogeekery/using-mercurial-queues-and-bitbucket-org

Problems with MQ
----------------

Despite how powerful MQ is (or perhaps *because* of it) it has some problems.
Most could be fixed if someone had a week or two to spend on it, but so far no
one has stepped up.

I'd do it if I could afford to take a week away from full-time/freelance work,
but I can't right now.  If you want to be the hero of at least one MQ user (me)
here's what sucks about MQ:

* There's no easy way to pull changes *out* of an MQ patch.
* There's no easy way to split an MQ patch into two patches (the current
  horrible "workaround" is to empty the current patch, `hg qrecord` part one,
  and `hg qnew` to make a new patch with part two).
* You can't pop a patch once you've made changes in your working directory. You
  need to [shelve][] the changes, pop the patch, and then unshelve the changes.

[shelve]: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ShelveExtension

In addition there's another MQ-related change that would be very, very nice:

* Refactor the record extension and put it into core Mercurial, so that
  `hg qrecord` could be used without an extra extension (and we could have `hg
  commit --interactive`).

If someone takes the time to fix these problems I'll love them forever.  Until
then we're stuck with the powerful-but-sometimes-clumsy MQ interface.

Hopefully this post has given git users (and Mercurial users) an idea of how
powerful MQ can be.  If you have any questions please find me on
[Twitter][twsl] and me know!

[twsl]: {{links.twsl}}