I would like to have a mercurial repository on my website so that I can push/pull as I make updates to it, but I do not have SSH access, only HTTP or FTP.
Can this be done?
I suspect no, since I would not be able to run hg on the server, so I would only be able to clone it.
Yeah, this can definitely be done. You don't need ssh access to install mercurial or to access it. You compile it on your own system and then FTP up the resulting file. The only real requirement is that the website to which you upload it allow CGI applications to run. Without that you're limited to the static-http repositories, which don't support pushing.
You're correct. If you can't install software, you could use the static-http option, but it only supports cloning/pulling. See the comparison of publishing mechanisms.
You can setup hgweb to allow pushes.
I'm also using only FTP to update my site, but I keep all the files in a local Mercurial repo (you could use a repository on bitbucket - they have a free plan that includes 1 private repo and 1 GB of available space). When you need to add/update something, apply the
changes locally, update the Mercurial repo, and then use FTP to update the website.
Related
I work with a partner on an PHP site for a client. We have a common Mercurial repository (on Bitbucket), both local copies and the live site. We have only FTP access to the live site (which can't be changed since it is a hosting package with FTP only).
I want to be able to push changes from the repository to the live site.
Until now I simply keep track of changed files in the repo and copy them manually with FileZilla - a error prone and annoying task. My idea is, to mount the remote location locally (i.e. using CurlFtpFS) and tell mercurial to automagically copy changed files to the site. Ideally I want to be able to specify which changes but this would be a bonus. It would be sufficient if the local state of the files within the repo are synced.
Is there any good way to do this using linux commandline tools?
My first recommendation is, if at all possible, get a package that allows more access. FTP only is just brutal.
But since you are looking for a real answer to your question, I have two ideas for you:
I would suggest looking into the mercurial FTP Extension. I personally have never used it since I have never gotten myself stuck in a ftp-only situation (not for a long time at least), but it looks promising. Looks like if you make sure that you tag your production releases it will work really well for you. (make sure to use the -uploaded param)
Also, if you only ever want the tip to be installed on your production env, then you could look at the suggestion Martin Geisler made on the bitbucket user group a few days ago. Basically his suggestion is to utilize bitbucket's "ping url" functionality. You would have to write a server-side script/url handler that would accept that ping, then fetch the tip from bitbucket (as a zip) and then unzip/unpack it. This is a bit complicated, but if you are looking for complete automation and the tip will always be the best this could work for you.
One notion is the use the hg archive command:
hg archive /path/to/curlftpsfs
which will put a snapshot of your repo in that location -- it will however overwrite any file already there.
Another option is to create a Mercurial clone in that same /path/to/curlftpsfs and then just do a hg pull ; hg update in it on your local system with the remote one mounted. Setting that up initially will mean transferring the whole thing but subsequently you'll only be sending deltas.
Some folks don't like this last options because it exposes your entire /.hg repository too, but you can block access to that at the web server.
I came across this problem a while ago after switching from AWS to a local web hosting that provides only ssh/ftp.
My previous approach of updating a production site on AWS using "hg pull; hg update -C" can no longer be used on the new web hosting. They don't have mercurial installed for shared hosts.
So, what I did is to mount the remote location using ftp, to a local machine (i.e. your laptop), then run the hg pull and update commands locally on your machine at the path where has the remote ftp site mounted.
Windows solution:
BeyondCompare (http://www.scootersoftware.com/) is an awesome piece of software. Apart from being awesome it can mirror your local folder to the FTP site. It's comparing files and only transfers what's new.
I have a shared web host and I am trying to figure out a way to download the latest copy of a private project from bitbucket onto the server.
The server does not have any versioning tools installed, but it does have scp and ssh with a jailshell level of access. It also has wget and curl...
Can I can do something like this?
scp ssh://hg#bitbucket.org/jespern/testrepo ~/public_html
I don't have a problem setting up the identity files / DSA keys, but I'm not exactly sure how the protocols are put together here so I need some help with the basic syntax.
Or, if scp is not the way to go, does ssh have an option for doing this? or is it possible to use CURL or wGet to grab the latest version of the repository and then reconstruct it on the server?
I am sure there is a way to do this, so please don't respond saying "it can't be done."
Thanks!
You can download from bitbucket using either http with URL like this:
http://bitbucket.org/jespern/rewsfeed/get/tip.tar.bz2
Notice how tip can be used in place of a revision ID in that URL form to always get the latest snapshot.
Alternately, you can just install Mercurial in your home directory on the shared web host -- people have succeeded in doing that on almost every webhost out there no matter how locked down they are.
Then you can just do: /home/me/bin hg clone ssh://hg#bitbucket.org/jespern/testrepo ~/public_html
I know it is not possible to create Mercurial repositories remotely using HTTP(S), for instance:
$ hg init https://host.org/repos/project
or
$ hg clone /path/to/local/project https://host.org/repos/project
But, what's the reason? Security issues? No need for it? Simply because nobody has implemented it yet?
Rationale for this question: In my company we share most resources via HTTPS, i.e. access permissions are managed by Apache only and regular users cannot login via SSH on the server. That's just perfect as long as repositories need to be served only (for that purpose we are happy with hgwebdir.cgi). However, we also want to allow the remote creation of repos, without the need to maintain additional/patched scripts on the server and extra tools on clients.
To be clear: This question does not ask for solutions to our particular problem but for the reason why Mercurial does not support this feature itself.
UPDATE
Here's a more technical description of the situation I'm thinking of. Supposed hgwebdir.cgi serves a collection of repositories in /path/to/repos at https://.../repos (with pushing enabled). Every user allowed to access this URL (as configured in Apache) may pull and push changesets, effectively this means that hgwebdir.cgi (and thus hg) edits and creates files below /path/to/repos. Now, what's the barrier in letting hgwebdir.cgi also create new repositories below /path/to/repos?
I think the reason is that adding support for creating repositories will bring in a fair amount of baggage:
if you can create repositories you would expect to be able to delete them. While that might seem simple, it would be a big step away from the safe manner in which Mercurial normally works -- there is no destructive commands in standard Mercurial.
people would also want to edit the .hg/hgrc files to set the description and contact information -- standard Mercurial never changes the config files, so this would again be a new thing.
people would also want to manage users' access to the new repositories -- this means editing .htaccess files or the equivalent for other webservers.
... and so on. Implementing this "little" feature will open up for a lot of extra feature requests and we only have a few Mercurial developers that are also sawy web developers.
However, there is now an excellent open source solution: Kallithea gives you a "mini-Bitbucket" that you can deploy on your own server. It will do all of the above. I would install that on my server if I needed something more powerful than plain hgweb.cgi. It supports both Mercurial and Git.
As far as I know, none of the SCM alternatives allow the creation of remote repositories natively. SVN, CVS, Git, et al.
That's usually the job of a hosting provider: SourceForge, Google Code, BitBucket. All of them implement the repository creation on top of their authetication infrastructure.
For example, Debian's Mercurial hosting is limited to Debian Developers, and to create a new repository you need to login via SSH to the server and create the repository on your local home folder, much like Apache's public_html directory.
Various answers (including your own) give some pretty good reasons why the functionality isn't there (separation of concerns mostly), but if you really want to add it you could do so with just a line or two of shell. Here's a hideously unsafe example I gave quite a while ago showing how to add that funcionality in high trust environments: Remote Repository Creation in Mercurial over HTTP
At the company where I work we are using hg as (d)vcs.
Most of the repositories in use are kept in a cenralized space and served via hgweb.
For ease of use and better user experiance (and overview) I like to have something like gitorious (github, bitbucket).
It should allow
hg as backend (or else I'd install gitorious...)
local installation (not per developer, but locally on our site / not hosted)
easy (web-based) repository-creation
personal forking (cloning, but keeping the new repo physically on the same server)
merge requests
A good tool is RhodeCode that serves Mercurial. It looks really good, has user management, grouping, LDAP integration hook control and some graphing options.
The current release (1.3.x) supports git repositories.
You should make this decision looking at the PublishingRepositories wiki page.
My preferred solution is to use the hg-ssh script that already comes with your mercurial install. It makes it very easy to give multiple people ssh access without creating a separate system account for each, and without giving them shell access. It's very easily configured in the .ssh/authorized_keys file of the single shared user.
Repository creation isn't web-based, but it's very easy and personal forking is completely supported:
hg clone ssh://shared#server/main/repo ssh://shared#server/my-personal/repo
I then set up the hgweb script that comes with mercurial to provide a read-only view, and rely on ssh:// for all writes (though hgweb also does writes / push just fine).
If you really think web based repo creation is easier than one-line ssh-based creation I've previously written a stupidly simple script to do so:
http://ry4an.org/unblog/UnBlog/2009-09-17
Someone is going to suggest "mercurial server", and I'd recommend against it. It's not current and never added much value over ssh.
BitBucket.
They are the official HG host, and are actually very good.
I'm completely biased, since I'm a developer on it, but Kiln does a very good job helping you create and manage repositories. It also has code reviews and is commercially supported. You can install on your own server, or Fog Creek will host it for you.
I'm trying to propose switching from CVS and SVN to Mercurial at work. Before I do, I'd like to have any foreseeable questions answered.
How can I set up a repository to allow push and authenticate users?
I'm more familiar with administering SVN, and in SVN it was just a few lines like:
[users]
userA = passwordA
userB = passwordB
And then for permissions it was like:
[general]
userA = write
userB = read
I would really like something like svnserve that allowed me to circumvent using a full-blown apache, since all I need is a central location for pushing change sets. I know that Mercurial doesn't necessarily require a central location, but I think it would be convenient in my workplace.
Thanks!
Try using SCM Manager. It works well for Mercurial. It has a built-in HTTP/HTTPS server and allows you to manage authentication. The only requirement is Java.
http://www.scm-manager.org
https://bitbucket.org/sdorra/scm-manager
Briefly, to setup Mercurial with authentication:
Follow the Getting Started Guide here. If you're using Windows, be sure to use
scm-server\bin\scm-server.bat
to start SCM Manager.
Click on Repository Types > Mercurial Settings > Start Configuration Wizard > Select: Download and Install to install the Mercurial plugin for SCM Manager.
Be patient, downloading takes a while.
When it's finished installing, the screen will go back to the Repository Config window. Restart SCM Manager. After you restart and you should now be able to create and host Mercurial repositories over HTTP.
Double check security: General > Config and uncheck Allow Anonymous Access.Security > Users and deactivate anonymous.
You can also use SCM Manager to host Git and SVN repositories as well.
Mercurial Server is an awesome solution, which I've used on a few occasions.
As #nlucaroni mentioned in the comment, one option is using SSH authentication. It allows authenticated pull and push. We use it in our company together with Apache-hosted HTTP access for anonymous pull-only repositories. See the "ssh" solution at the Publishing Mercurial Repositories.
You can try the textauth extension. Please give it a go and send some feedback to Mercurial mailing list, then perhaps you will see it integrated into a coming release of Mercurial.