Non IDE development strategy - what do others do that's fairly simple?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 30Jul2020 21:15, Marco Sulla <Marco.Sulla.Python at gmail.com> wrote:
>What you want is a branch, I guess.
>
>https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/Branch
>
>For simplicity, I suggest you have two different directories: one for the
>development branch and the other for the production branch.

Yes to this advice.

And I am also an editor in one window and command line in another window 
person.

Note that a Mercurial "named branch" is a more, um, "solid" thing than a 
git branch, which is much more like a mercurial bookmark. Basicly, you 
can't easily remove a mercurial named branch. Bookmarks you can make and 
discard freely. That said, I hardly ever use bookmarks.

You also do not need a named branch - a cloned directory works as well.

I use mercurial branches for long lived things, particularly development 
on theme. My personal library has a bunch of long term branches - they 
all get merged back into "default" frequently as things stabilise.

So for your scenario I'd add a named branch for the development, 
particularly if it has a theme. But also as Marco suggests, clone your 
tree into another directory for the development.

Look:

    [~]fleet2*> cd ~/hg
    /Users/cameron/hg
    [~/hg]fleet2*> ls -d css-*
    css-adzapper             css-nodedb-nested-curly-syntax
    css-aws                  css-nodedb-proxyobjs
    css-beyonwiz             css-persist
    css-calibre              css-pilfer
    css-contractutils        css-pt
    css-csbug                css-py3
    [...]

Each of those trees is a clone of the main "css" tree. They do not all 
have named branches.

    [~/hg]fleet2*> cd css
    [~/hg/css(hg:default)]fleet2*> hg clone . ../css-newdev
    [~/hg/css(hg:default)]fleet2*> cd ../css-newdev
    [~/hg/css-newdev(hg:default)]fleet2*> hg branch newdev
    [~/hg/css-newdev(hg:newdev)]fleet2*>

So now I've got a clone in css-newdev, for a new named branch "newdev" 
(obviously pick a better branch name). No need to make a named branch, 
unless this is long lived, in which case it helps you track where 
changes occurred - the branch name is recorded in commits.

You can merge to or from "../css" as needed.

I find this _much_ easier to deal with than the common git habit of 
switching branches in place (which you can also do).

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>