===== Mercurial - Set location for temporary files when issuing "hg commit" =====

=== Background ===
We were trying to do some kind of autocommit feature, thus when modifying files on the filesystem, the changes should be automatically committed into a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control|VCS]]. First we chose [[http://git-scm.com/|Git]], which worked pretty fine. When trying to switch to [[http://mercurial.selenic.com/|Mercurial]], we stumbled across some problems, which are still unsolved.

If you're curious, we used [[http://inotify-tools.sourceforge.net/|inotify]] like that:
  inotifywait -m -r --exclude ^\./\.hg/.* -e close_write -e move -e create -e delete .


=== Problem ===

When issuing ''hg commit -m 'bar''', mercurial seems to create some temporary files inside the repo's root directory, which again will be captured by inotify triggering a nice rolling loop ;]

<code bash>
babacu:~# inotifywait -m -r --exclude ^\./\.hg/.* -e close_write -e move -e create -e delete .
Setting up watches.  Beware: since -r was given, this may take a while!
Watches established.

>> touch foo
./ CREATE foo
./ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE foo

>> hg add foo

>> hg commit -m 'initial commit'
./ CREATE i4Q6-P
./ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE i4Q6-P
./ DELETE i4Q6-P
./ CREATE tmpjY7y9W
./ DELETE tmpjY7y9W
./ CREATE wFrOqb
./ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE wFrOqb
./ DELETE wFrOqb
./ CREATE tmpQ6mBth
./ DELETE tmpQ6mBth

[...] on and on and on

</code>


=== Possible solutions ===
  * Find a way to let them be created elsewhere using some configuration setting or environment variable
  * Patch the code!


{{tag>mercurial inotify}}