NetBeans repository is migrating to Mercurial

NetBeans.org is migrating its code repository from CVS (cvs.netbeans.org) to Mercurial (hg.netbeans.org). This change will effect all community members who are integrating code changes to repository.

The migration to Mercurial is planned to be completed as soon as possible, but with a minimal impact on current development. A small team has been put in place to facilitate this migration. They will deliver documentation and training materials to the community before the switch is done.

You may see some preparation work done directly in the cvs.netbeans.org repository already, for example moving some of the directories around and some changes to project metadata and build scripts. Such changes will be happening and will effect all modules in the cvs repository.

They have sited several reasons for the switch and the most important aspect is scalability. The NetBeans project has also sited the superior functionality of Hg compared to CVS in terms of moving and renaming files, commits of changes and off-line work with the repository.

You can read more about the reasons and the migration plan.

About Mercurial

Mercurial is another distributed source management tool for software developers. It is cross-platform and it is written in Python. Although written in Python, it’s binary diff implementation is written in C.

Its major goals include high performance and scalability; serverless, fully distributed collaborative development; robust handling of both plain text and binary files; and advanced branching and merging capabilities, while remaining conceptually simple. It includes an integrated web interface.

The creator and lead developer of Mercurial is Matt Mackall. The full source code is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, making Mercurial free software.

You can read more about Mercurial at http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/.