Installing Mercurial on Mac OS

Mercurial is a free, distributed source control management tool. This tutorial covers how to install Mercurial on the Mac OS and clone the Fab Academy archive.

NOTE: after each line of code you type in - you need to hit the enter key.

Step 1: Install Mercurial

You need to download and install Mercurial (there is an installer)l: http://mercurial.selenic.com/

Step 2: Key files

You need to put key files (academy and academy.pub) where Mercurial can find them.

Open terminal (On Mac OS: from the Finder menu > Go > Utilities > Terminal)

You will be in your home directory by default. Your prompt with look something like::

MyComputerName:~ myhomedirectoryname$ 

Where "MyComputerName" is the name of your hard disk and the "myhomedirectoryname is the username you created to login to Mac OS.

Type the following text into the terminal after the prompt:

sudo ls ~/.ssh  

You system will ask you for a password - type in the password you use as an adminstrator on your Mac (this is the same password you use to log into your computer).

Note: If the system responds with a message like:
" ls: cannot access /home/akaziuna/.ssh: No such file or directory",

Then you need to create the .ssh folder.

If you do not get this message, skip the command below.

Type:

sudo mkdir ~/.ssh        

Within the .ssh directory you need to create another directory called keys.
To do this type:

sudo mkdir ~/.ssh/keys

Download the keys that your instructor sent you in an email. They are named academy and academy.pub. You will need to place them in the keys directory. To do this, save the key files to your desktop from the email.

Change your location in the terminal by moving to the Desktop folder.

Type:

cd ~/Desktop

You need to move both of the keys from your desktop to the keys directory that you created earlier.

Type:

sudo mv academy ~/.ssh/keys
Then type:
sudo mv academy.pub ~/.ssh/keys

Both keys are now located in the .ssh directory. You can check to see by typing: sudo ls -l ~/.ssh/keys to list the contents of the directory. You should see that academy and academy.pub are listed.

Step 3: Permissions for the Private Key

You need to set permissions for your private key so that only you have read/write access to them.

Type:

sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/as220Keys/academy 

sudo chmod 644 ~/.ssh/as220Keys/academy.pub

Step 4: Setting the port

You will need to set the port that ssh uses to access fabacademy.org. You can do this by creating and editing a config file within your .ssh directory.

To open the file with the nano text editor, type:

nano config

The nano text editor will open in the terminal window.

Add the following text to the empty file:

host fabacademy.org 
port 846 

To save the file:
- press [control]+O to save the file (then the enter key)
- press [control]+X to exit the editor

Do not add any extension to the file.

Now we need to move it to the .ssh directory.

Type:

sudo mv config ~/.ssh/keys

Step 5 Clone the Archive

Now we need to clone the archive. For convenience, we will clone it to the desktop.

Copy the text and paste it into the terminal:

hg clone -e "ssh -p 846 -i ~/.ssh/keys/academy" ssh://hg@fabacademy.org/academy.2014

If you are cloning for the first time, you may be told that the "authenticity of the host cannot be established" and are given the option to type "yes" or "no".

Type "yes"

You should see the following response (or a similar response) in the terminal as the archive is cloned. Success!

requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 225 changesets with 8439 changes to 7765 files
updating to branch default
4479 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
Note: The number of files listed varies with the number of files in archive.


Step 6: Edit the Configuration File

Now you need to edit your arcive's personal configuration file. To do this you need to move into the archive folder that you just created on the desktop. It is called academy.2014

Type:

cd academy.2014

You are now within the academy.2014 directory. Your path should change to : YourUsername@ubuntu:~/Desktop/academy.2014$

To edit your archive's personal configuration file (called hgrc) to reflect your name and email we need to open the file in a editior:

Type:

nano .hg/hgrc

A text editor will open inside of the terminal window. This text should already be in the file:

[paths]
default = ssh://hg@fabacademy.org/academy.2014

Note: Do not change this text, just add to it.

Put the following text in the file. Change the First and Last Name to your first and last name. Change the "user@machine.domain" text to your email address.
[ui]
username = First Last <user@machine.domain>
ssh = ssh -p 846 -i ~/.ssh/keys/academy -C
[hooks]
changegroup = hg update >&2

To save the file:
- press [control]+O to save the file (then the enter key)
- press [control]+X to exit the editor

Step 7: Update the Archive

Now try updating your archive by typing:

hg pull

you should see a response like this:

pulling from ssh://hg@fabacademy.org/academy.2014
searching for changes
no changes found

Congratulations! You have been successful and you can now work with the archive. Look over the Mercurial basics and resources page.

However, if you get a response like this:

pulling from ssh://hg@fabacademy.org/academy.2014
searching for changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 1 changesets with 2 changes to 2 files
2 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
(run 'hg update' to get a working copy)

Type "hg update", now you are successful.

Troubleshooting:

If you are asked for a password:
then Mercurial can't find the keys or the key file permissions are wrong. (see steps 2 & 3).

If you try to pull and you get this message:
remote: ssh: connect to host fabacademy.org port 22: Connection refused
abort: no suitable response from remote hg!

Then you forgot to edit the config file (see step 6)

Working With Mercurial

Look over the Mercurial basics and resources page.

Tutorial by Anna Kaziunas France - Fab Academy AS220 Providence, RI - Last Updated January 2014