The good news starts off with the release of Mercurial version 1.2,
in which my largest contribution becomes part of an official release.
Now people who have multiple branches (probably named branches) that
are unwanted can close a branch. As with normal operation in Mercurial
nothing gets deleted, as that would change history, instead a new commit
flags the branch as "closed." A closed branch can then easily be ignored
by commands or tools. The heads and branches commands can be set to skip
displaying the closed branch.
The other big thing in the release that is relevant to me is the addition
of the pure-python modules. The parts of Mercurial that were covered by
C modules now have python equivalents. I like this for a couple of reasons,
it makes it easier for folks to try running on Jython or PyPy or other
similar platforms. I also like it because python is (for me at least)
easier to read than C. Now its easier to get the gist of a module before
seeing the work done to speed it up.
Next up is the pleasant discovery of matplotlib a graphics & plotting
library for Python. Or, I could say re-discovery because I think I ran
across it a while ago but forgot about it. Now that I need to draw
graphs with lots of data points for work, I think this lib will really
come in handy. The result even looks pretty.
My self-made tool for partially synchronizing my music directory between
desktop and laptop is making some good progress after being dormant for a
while. The "pull" and compare functions are working but I still need to
implement a "push" operation. The tool is heavily influenced by the
Mercurial cli and even some of its code structure. I will probably will
make the code available, but don't plan on advertising it too much.
The "database" structure isn't a generic one with wide application.
