Hello, users of Mercurial, Evolve and/or Topic!
We're planning to release a feature release candidate of evolve and
topic extensions that contains an implementation of a concept that was
in the plans for quite some time: topic namespaces (the name could
change, if we find something better)
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/TopicPlan#sub_branches.2C_namespacing_and_representation
In short, topic namespaces are trying to fix one of our major UX flaws:
branches can continue to be used for release management, and topics can
still be used for implementing features, but now there would be
something for organizing topics into wider concepts. Topic namespaces,
just like topics, are designed to go away when you publish your commits,
and we tried to make them as unobtrusive as possible, to not get in the
way of current workflows. There is a default topic namespace that will
not clutter the UI, and users can keep using only branches and topics as
usual.
But we did change some things in the UI. Remember seeing "branch:topic"
format in `hg branches`? Well, it was a temporary implementation detail.
With the implementation of topic namespaces we introduce a more
thought-out way to represent branches plus topics. In this new format,
topic namespaces become sort of a glue for all things related to (named)
branching, e.g. this is what you'd see in hg log:
branch//namespace/topic
or, if you don't set topic namespace:
branch//topic
In the future, we're going to support providing branches, topic
namespaces (if you decide to use them) and topics in this format to all
commands where it makes sense.
Now, what these topic namespaces are aimed at? Among other things, topic
namespaces are supposed to help users manage topics; their own and other
users'. Previously, some people were already using username as a prefix
for their topic names - this was an ad-hoc implementation of separation
and/or ownership of work, and now with topic namespaces it's becoming
more standardized and user-friendly.
Here are more details on what aspects of workflow topic namespaces try
to improve (taken from the wiki page linked above):
* on the client side, they could be used to safeguard history-rewriting
operations and in particular avoid conflicting with other people's work
* code hosting providers and forges could map topic namespaces to their
user or team concepts, and hence ultimately to their permission model
* they could be used to narrow user view and exchange to the part that
are relevant to them by default
Although the UI didn't change much, and a big part of the planned
features is not implemented yet, the changes that are included are quite
extensive. We have changed a significant part of topic's representation
locally and over the wire during the exchange. Given the scale of these
changes we encourage people to test this release candidate. That would
definitely help us pinpoint real issues that we didn't foresee during
the planning and the development. It could also possibly give you some
ideas how to integrate topic namespaces into your workflows early.
The release candidate is coming out in the next few days, and the final
feature release will most likely be ready in about 2 weeks after that.
During these 2 weeks you can reach out to us and tell if you notice
something being broken, and we'll obviously try and fix it before the
final release. That being said, topic namespaces are here to stay,
although maybe under a different name and with some changes after
testing in real circumstances.
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