Associating Change sets to Releases and Displaying Mercurial Branches/Tags

[Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter @matthawley]

We deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software today.

Associating Change sets to Releases

When you’re editing your release information, you’ll notice a new textbox in the Release Details section that will allow you to add a Change set number.

Just type in a valid change set number from your source control listing, and click the Save button. You’ll notice that when you view your release later, you’ll see that there is now a link pointing directly to that change set.

To complete the cycle, when viewing your list of change sets, we’ll highlight the specific change set and give a link back to the release.

Displaying Mercurial Branches and Tags

With the recent support of Mercurial as a supported source control system, we have realized there are still lots of room for improvement for to host a great experience. Our first of many features to come to directly support Mercurial within CodePlex was the display of branches and tags on the change set listing.

To ensure that existing Mercurial users quickly understood how branches and tags are displayed, we adopted the display you commonly see in VisualHg. Branches are indicated in green, and Tags are indicated in yellow. Furthermore, you’ll also notice that we are not displaying the branch name for each change set, but only when there is a context switch between branches.

When you drill-down into a change set to view files, you will also notice the display of branches and tags. At this level, we will always display a branch so there is no confusion.

Where can I see an Example?

You can visit CodePlex’s wiki engine, WikiPlex, where I set the change set numbers for all releases and Mercurial as a source control system showing branches and tags.