Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Contents
This platform is supported by Mercurial as of version 2.2.
The contrib/plan9 directory contains support for Mercurial on Plan 9 from Bell Labs platforms. It is assumed that the version of Python running on these systems supports the ANSI/POSIX Environment (APE). At the time of this writing, the bichued/python port is the most commonly installed version of Python on these platforms. If a native port of Python is ever made, some minor modification will need to be made to support some of the more esoteric requirements of the platform rather than those currently made (cf. posix.py).
Configuration
Configuration on Plan 9 is largely the same as other platforms. This section defines platform-specific differences.
File paths
Configuration file paths have been slightly modified to fit into the Plan 9 file system hierarchy:
Per-user configuration:
$home/lib/hgrc
Per-system configuration:
/lib/mercurial/hgrc
/lib/mercurial/hgrc.d/*.rc
Per-installation configuration:
<install-root>/lib/mercurial/hgrc
<install-root>/lib/mercurial/hgrc.d/*.rc
For more detail, see hg help config.
Other differences
By default, installations will have the FactotumExtension enabled; this extension permits factotum(4) to act as an authentication agent for HTTP repositories. Additionally, an ExtdiffExtension command named 9diff is enabled which generates diff(1) compatible output suitable for use with the plumber(4).
Commit messages are plumbed using E if no editor is defined; users must update the plumbed file to continue, otherwise the hg process must be interrupted. This change was primarily made to reduce confusion as vi(1) is the MIPS instruction simulator on Plan 9 platforms.
Prerequisites
The following packages should be installed from fgb's contrib via contrib/install:
fgb/z
fgb/bz2
fgb/openssl
bichued/python
Once these packages are installed, the following directories should be (re)moved prior to either installing a binary package or building from source. This step is due to improper packaging by bichued/python:
/sys/lib/python/hgext
/sys/lib/python/mercurial
For more detail, see contrib(1).
Installation
Building on Plan 9 can be somewhat of a challenge since it requires explict use of APE. Due to the lack of loadable extension modules on Plan 9, the distribution must be built with --pure. Additionally, GNU gettext is not supported, so building locales must be skipped. Scripts should also be installed to /rc/bin to ensure they are in the default path for users.
A mkfile is provided in the contrib directory to ease the burden of building and installing the distribution.
To build, issue:
% mk build
To install, issue:
% mk install
Once installed, hg debuginstall should be issued to identify problems:
% hg debuginstall Checking encoding (UTF-8)... Checking installed modules (/sys/lib/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mercurial)... Checking templates (/sys/lib/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mercurial/templates)... Checking commit editor... Checking username... No problems detected
Packaging
A maintained binary package is available from fgb's contrib named stallion/mercurial. This package tracks official releases and should be suitable for most (if not all) Plan 9 users.
A proto(2) file is included in the contrib directory as an example of how a binary distribution could be packaged, ostensibly with contrib(1).
TODO
Some work remains with regard to documentation. Section 5 manual page references for hgignore and hgrc need to be re-numbered to section 6 (file formats) and a new man page writer should be written to support the Plan 9 man macro set. Until these issues can be resolved, manual pages are elided from the installation.