Using TortoiseHg’s Repository explorer

Question

I'm coming from a TortoiseSVN background and decided to give TortoiseHg a try. One thing I got really used to with TortoiseSVN was the SVN Repo-Explorer, which worked quite similarly to Windows Explorer. However, when I tried to use TortoiseHg's Repository Explorer, what I got was something else, it was more like TortoiseSVN's Show Log. It showed me what the recent commits were and what files were changed and even had nifty graphs. However, I'm still left wanting for TortoiseSVN's Repo-Explorer.

Does TortoiseHg have anything like this? How am I supposed to poke around the Repository if I can only view changed stuff?

Answer 1

I might be wrong as I have little experience with Hg myself, but I believe the reason TortoiseHg doesn't have a repository like its SVN counterpart is because Hg is a distributed VCS instead of a centralized VCS like SVN. So, the actual repository is your "checked out" copy. When you commit, you commit to your local repository, then you can push changes to other people or locations (such as google code, or your team mates). There are actually multiple different repositories for a project located in many places, instead of a single one, so there isn't really any meaning to "exploring the repository". The best you can do is check for incoming change-sets and view your local repository (using windows explorer).

This is mostly my reasoning based off a little experience with both. I might be wrong, but I hope this sounds reasonable.

This article might help clear it up: Distributed revision control. It took me some time to wrap my head around the idea of a distributed VCS too. In a nutshell, it's kinda like emailing your changes to your team mates. Everyone has their own individual repository, and each updates their own repository by getting change-sets from others.