Mercurial: two separate repos somewhat related (yes I'm getting confused)

Question

I have a local repository, let's call it ONE. ONE is the actual program. It's an android program, in case it matters for some reason.

I have a remote repository, let's call it EXT. EXT is somewhat a library, used by ONE.

ONE has a complex directory structure, mandated by android. The main sources are in src/bla/bla/ONE. Since ONE uses EXT, to do it I had to create another directory next to that one, that is src/bla/bla/EXT.

I think would like to keep them separated in two repositories, but I need for them to actually be in this same directory structure to compile ONE.

At the moment I just created a symlink to do it, but I wonder if there is a better way of doing that, that uses some hg feature.

Answer 1

Subrepositories are great for this. Take a look at this related SO question: (how do I add a subrepo to an existing repo in mercurial.

Answer 2

I'm no expert on this, but I don't think sub-repositories work in this case.

You have 2 projects with the same deeply nested directory structure:

Project "ONE":

ONE
    /src
        /bla
            /bla
                /ONE

Project "EXT"

EXT
    /src
        /bla
            /bla
                /EXT

When you compile these projects you want the following structure:

Compile Project
    /src
        /bla
            /bla
                /ONE
                /EXT

Or something similar - essentially both source trees combined under a single "src".

Since you can't checkout part of a repository, wherever you create a sub-repository you'll get the full "EXT" directory. So, if you make a subrepo next to "ONE" you'll end up with:

Combined Project
    /src
        /bla
            /bla
                /ONE
                /src
                   /bla
                       /bla
                           /EXT

What you are after is a "Partial Clone", which doesn't exist yet.

https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/PartialClone

I think OS links are the way to go.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Use hg subrepos. For example:

$ git init ONE-proj
$ cd ONE-proj
$ mkdir -p src/bla/bla/ONE
$ ... # commit your initial project files for ONE
$ echo src/bla/bla/EXT = /path/to/hg/repository/EXT > .hgsub
$ hg add .hgsub
$ hg clone /path/to/hg/repository/EXT src/bla/bla/EXT
$ hg commit