Mercurial Repositories¶
Review Board supports posting and reviewing code on Mercurial repositories.
To simplify posting changes to Review Board, we recommend using RBTools. This ensures that the diffs are in the correct format, and makes managing review requests much easier. See Using RBTools with Mercurial for more information.
Note
This guide assumes that you’re adding a Mercurial repository that’s hosted somewhere in your network or one that’s accessible by your Review Board server. Review Board requires either local access to your repository or network access using hgweb (as documented below) or another hosting service.
Follow the documentation in the links below if your Mercurial repository is hosted on one of these services, as configuration will differ.
If your Mercurial repository is hosted on another third-party service, it may not work with Review Board! Please contact us to request support for that service.
Installing Mercurial Support¶
Before you add the repository, you will need to install Mercurial on the server. We recommend installing this using the Python packages instead of your distribution packages.
To install Mercurial, run:
$ /opt/reviewboard/bin/pip install mercurial
$ pip3 install mercurial
Adding the Repository¶
To configure a Mercurial repository, first proceed to add the repository and select Mercurial from the Repository type field.
If your repository is within your network and accessed remotely, you will need
to enable hgweb. You can then point to the http:// or https:// URL.
See Using a hgweb-Backed Repository.
If your repository is locally accessible over the file system via the Review Board server, you can point to file path of the repository. However, there are caveats. See Using a Local Clone.
If your repository is instead hosted on a compatible source code hosting service like Bitbucket, you’ll want to refer to the instructions on that service. See the list above.
Using a hgweb-Backed Repository¶
If you have hgweb installed for your repository, you can point to the
http:// or https:// URL for your repository. Review Board can use this
to fetch the files from the repository for review.
To start, you’ll need to install hgweb. You can follow Mercurial’s documentation on hgweb.
Once that’s set up, you will want to set your Path field to the hgweb path for the repository. This is the same as your clone path. For example:
https://hg.example.com/repo/myrepo
Or for a real-world example: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/evolve
If your repository is protected by Basic HTTP Auth, you can supply credentials in the Username and Password fields. They will be used any time Review Board accesses your hgweb instance.
If you use the post-commit review request feature with hgweb, you need to use at least Mercurial 3.9.
Using a Local Clone¶
Review Board can make use of a locally-accessible Mercurial clone, so long as that clone contains the very latest changes for your repository.
If the Mercurial clone is the master repository that your developers are cloning from, then you’re in good shape. However, if it’s a clone of the master repository, you will need to ensure it’s consistently up-to-date. One way to do this would be to have a cron job pull the latest changes at least once a minute.
When using a local clone, you’ll need to point the Path field to
the clone directory. For example: /var/hg/projectname/.
You will leave the Username and Password fields blank.