4.1. Common Features

These features are common to many TortoiseHg tools, so we document them here just once.

4.1.1. Keyboard Accelerators

We define a few keyboard accelerators that all of the TortoiseHg tools support.

Ctrl-Q
quit the application, including all open windows
Ctrl-W
close the current window (same as Ctrl-Q if only one window is open)
Ctrl-D
visual diff of currently selected file or changeset
Ctrl-Enter
activation
F5, Ctrl-R
refresh

On Mac OS X, the apple (command) key is used as the modifier instead of Ctrl. However some keyboard accelerators are internal to GTK+ so you must use the control key to access cut-paste functionality, for instance.

4.1.2. Visual Diffs

Visual Diff Window

Visual Diff Window

TortoiseHg 0.8 introduced a visual diff dialog that solves four usability issues:

  1. Allows you to select a visual diff tool for each individual file
  2. Allows you to use visual diff tools that fork background processes
  3. Allows you to use visual diff tools that do not support directory diffs
  4. Provides feedback when no files were modified

Providing visual diffs requires TortoiseHg to generate temporary files which contain older versions of data. Those temporary files are deleted when the visual diff dialog is closed.

If you would like to bypass this visual diff window and directly launch your visual diff tool open the global settings dialog and set TortoiseHg ‣ Skip Diff Window to true.

Note

The Skip Diff Window configurable does not change the behavior of visual diffs launched by the shell context menu. The visual diff window is always shown.

Warning

When you bypass the visual diff window, your visual diff tool must be able to handle directory diffs and it must not fork a background process. Caveat emptor.

Configuring a visual diff application for use in TortoiseHg is a two step process. First you must configure your application as an Extdiff command in your user Mercurial.ini:

[extdiff]
myapp = C:\Path\to\tool.exe

Then you can select myapp from the list of available extdiff commands in TortoiseHg ‣ Visual Diff Command. See the Frequently Asked Questions for some configuration examples.

When more than one Extdiff command is configured, the visual diff window will allow you to select the command to use as you open each file.

4.1.3. Treeview searches

Many TortoiseHg dialogs use treeviews to present lists of data to the user. The file lists in the status, commit, shelve, and changelog tools are treeviews. The changelog graph pane is a treeview. And even the annotate pane in the datamine tool is a treeview.

Most of the TortoiseHg treeviews are configured for live searches. Ensure that the treeview has focus (by clicking on a row), and begin typing a search phrase. A small entry window will appear containing the text you have typed, and the treeview will immediately jump to the first row that matches the text you have entered thus far. As you enter more characters, the search is refined.

  • Ctrl-F opens the search window explicitly
  • Ctrl-G advances the search to the next match
  • Shift-Ctrl-G searches backwards
  • The mouse scroll wheel will advance forwards and backwards through matching lines

4.1.4. HG command dialog

Many TortoiseHg tools use the hgcmd dialog to execute Mercurial commands that could potentially be interactive.

Mercurial command dialog

Interactive Mercurial Command Dialog

Note

Error messages are given a dark red color for contrast

When the Mercurial command has completed, the dialog gives focus to its Close button. So pressing Enter is all that is required to close the window.

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