PowerShell Prompt with Mercurial Status

I like Linux shell a lot, and like Rails commands, and I like PowerShell. It is about time that someone from Microsoft wakes up from GUI dream and give power to the command prompt.

I wanted to play a little with PowerShell and read one interesting blog from Mark Embling and his blog post named My Ideal Powershell Prompt with Git Integration.

My last blog post was about transition from Subversion to Git, but the day after I give chance to Mercurial and stay with it. It’s totally nonsensical to speak which is better, because they both are great. I think this is same like question about Rails vs. Django, Github vs. BitBucket.

I found myself in Mercurial, and it is (for me) easier to use in Windows environment. So in spirit of Mark Embling post, I’ll write my Ideal PowerShell Prompt for Mercurial or hg if you want.

I haven’t use PowerShell a lot, I like it because I can use Linux Shell commands ls, cp, … And never used/write PowerShell scripting. But I think I can read code and I can quick adapt in new code/language and find way to accomplish tasks but as many with a little help from Google

There are two scripts, one is PowerShell Profile script and another with functions to get mosto of hg status/branch, named:

• Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 (inside it calls the second one)
• hgutils.ps1 (functions for hg)

Because I have no time right now to explain all code, I urge you to read Mark Embling great blog post for more information.

Here is the code for Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1:

# My preferred prompt for Powershell.
# Displays mercurial branch and stats when inside a mercurial repository.

# You can clone it by
# hg clone https://xajler@bitbucket.org/xajler/powershell-prompt-for-mercurial/
# And find source here:
# http://bitbucket.org/xajler/powershell-prompt-for-mercurial/src/

# including mercurial functions to use it for prompt
. (Resolve-Path D:/Documents/WindowsPowershell/hgutils.ps1)

function prompt {
	$path = ""
	$pathbits = ([string]$pwd).split("\", [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries)
	if($pathbits.length -eq 1) {
		$path = $pathbits[0] + "\"
	} else {
		$path = $pathbits[$pathbits.length - 1]
	}
	$userLocation = '@ ' + $path
	$Host.UI.RawUi.WindowTitle = $userLocation
    Write-Host($userLocation) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Green       

   if (isCurrentDirectoryMercurialRepository) {
        $status = mercurialStatus
        $currentBranch = mercurialBranchName

        Write-Host(' [') -nonewline -foregroundcolor Yellow
        Write-Host($currentBranch) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Magenta
        Write-Host(' A' + $status["added"]) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Green
        Write-Host(' M' + $status["modified"]) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Yellow
        Write-Host(' D' + $status["deleted"]) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Cyan
        Write-Host(' !' + $status["missing"]) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Magenta
        Write-Host(' ?' + $status["untracked"]) -nonewline -foregroundcolor Red        

        Write-Host(']') -nonewline -foregroundcolor Yellow
    }    

	Write-Host('>') -nonewline -foregroundcolor Green
	return " "
}

And here is the code for hgutils.ps1:

# Mercurial (hg) functions
# Kornelije Sajler (http://learnaholic.me)
# Adopted from Git version of:
# Mark Embling (http://www.markembling.info/)

# You can clone it by
# hg clone https://xajler@bitbucket.org/xajler/powershell-prompt-for-mercurial/
# And find source here:
# http://bitbucket.org/xajler/powershell-prompt-for-mercurial/src/

# Is the current directory a Mercurial repository/working copy?
function isCurrentDirectoryMercurialRepository {
    if ((Test-Path ".hg") -eq $TRUE) {
        return $TRUE
    }

    # Test within parent dirs
    $checkIn = (Get-Item .).parent
    while ($checkIn -ne $NULL) {
        $pathToTest = $checkIn.fullname + '/.hg'
        if ((Test-Path $pathToTest) -eq $TRUE) {
            return $TRUE
        } else {
            $checkIn = $checkIn.parent
        }
    }

    return $FALSE
}

# Get the current branch
function mercurialBranchName {
    $currentBranch = ''
    hg branch | foreach {
        $currentBranch += $_
    }
   # Write-Host($currentBranch)
    return $currentBranch
}

# Extracts status details about the repo
function mercurialStatus {
    $untracked = 0
    $added = 0
    $modified = 0
    $deleted = 0
    $missing = 0

    $output = hg status

    #$branchbits = $output[0].Split(' ')
    #$branch = $branchbits[$branchbits.length - 1]

   # Write-Host($output)
    $output | foreach {
        if ($_ -match "^R") {
            $deleted += 1
        }
        elseif ($_ -match "^M") {
            $modified += 1
        }
        elseif ($_ -match "^A") {
            $added += 1
        }
        elseif ($_ -match "^\!") {
            $missing += 1
        }
        elseif ($_ -match "^\?") {
            $untracked += 1
        }
    }

    return @{"untracked" = $untracked;
             "added" = $added;
             "modified" = $modified;
             "deleted" = $deleted;
             "missing" = $missing}
}

I put scripts on great Mrecurail repository hosting BitBucket so you can clone it by command

hg clone https://xajler@bitbucket.org/xajler/powershell-prompt-for-mercurial/

And find it on this BitBucket page. Also have README if you don’t know how to use it.

I also use great Console2 to host my PowerShell, if you like my below screenshot in BitBucket repository you can also find Console settings xml (console.xml).

Sorry for any mistakes that made in this blog post, because I’m in hurry!!!

Hope you’ll find it useful and ask questions if you have it.

Moving from Subversion to Git

Yep, that day have come. I’m really sick of all Centralized Source Control (or Code) Managements (SCM). I have troubles earlier with Subversion (SVN) but I also have high tolerance and even in the beginning of my recent project have been dropping revisions to recreate the repository from confusing errors.

But few days ago I just got no new added files, after Commit in VisualSVN Server! Modified and deleted were good and committed properly. It was “sort of” my mistake but somehow TortoiseSVN started to mark added files as non-versioned, but why? I haven’t got this issue before, and now when I browse at VisualSVN Server trunk of my project through Web, there were no newly added and now modified files from my latest commits?!!

But this is not what awake my anger and despair, and make me to loose faith in SVN and go to look for Git. Today, when I was trying to commit a Revision, in first try it complained about some newly added directory, but then on new commit, I got error “No such revision 188”, WTF?

OK, I went to browse (like most would do on Google) to find solution. First one, was something like export your repository to new one, then, blah, blah.. No way!

Second one was, go to its Repository and find current file, found it, but it was 187 revision. I start digging and found 188 files somewhere along the files in Repository. Delete it, no help, “No such revision 188”!. And I’m pissed.

I’m going for Git, final, no excuses (maybe one day I’ll try Mercurial), but first, give it a chance to Git. After all it is Source Version by Linus Torvalds, and I even watched on YouTube his talk in Google about Git, it was interesting, many would be offended, but this is his way, and I like the guy!

But get on the dirty job. I would really, really like to migrate all revisions and importe them to Git. After all I commented them well, and TortoiseSVN “Show Log” is one great application for searching past revisions.

So there is a git-svn which confused me a lot because once (I think) it was used as git-svn, but now git svn. But I was impressed by it. It really take all my revisions from SVN to Git, and it so easy!!!

First you have to create a file users.txt. In it write all users that have committed to a project in format:

xajler = Kornelije Sajler <xajler@gmail.com>
VisualSVN Server = VisualSVN Server  <visual@visualsvn.com>

Note: I was using VisualSVN Server, and its default user is “VisualSVN Server”. This user made initial (or first) commit. BTW, this is a imaginary email for VisualSVN user!

mkdir project_tmp
cd project_tmp
git svn init http://code.yoursite.net/svn/project/trunk/ --no-metadata
git config svn.authorsfile ../users.txt
git svn fetch

That’s it, three Git commands. And after a couple of minutes all 187 revisions have been migrated, but not last one, 188 which was giving me error. First, I want only these files (not-able-to-commit ones) to overwrite the existing in Git repository, but then I saw that SVN failed to do last two commits.

So, I just copy all the files to new location remove all .svn folders and just replaced migrated files in Git Repository. I was at start of these project also using Git and SVN, so I copied from past .gitignore file. It purpose is to discard all files, directories, extensions, that are written in it.

At my job we use Visual SourceSafe 2005 and it is a painful to work with, SVN was a little relief but after 187 revisions, I gave up. Hope that Git would be better, and I’ll have no more idiotic problems like I was having with both SVN and SourceSafe.

If you have more insights about this error, and have you (and better why you) cope with Centralized SCMs, please do, write a comment!