If you want to take a Mercurial repository with you, you have several options:
- Create a server somewhere. Don’t forget to install all the security patches.
- Use an USB stick. Don’t forget it somewhere (like at home) and don’t forget to always push your changes onto it.
- Use Dropbox
Dropbox is a file server in the cloud. While they swear your data is save (“All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.” – see the features), it’s better to be safe than sorry. Also, Dropbox can’t really cope with the fast changes to the virtual filesystem done by Mercurial (this will lead to corrupt repositories and missing changesets).
The solution is to create a TrueCrypt container in your Dropbox. Dropbox won’t be able to see any changes as long as the container is mounted. When you dismount the container, Dropbox will check the file for changes (if you write to the container, TrueCrypt just modifies a few sectors). So even if you create a 100MB container, only the initial sync will be slow.
There are few obstacles, though:
- You must remember to mount the container, and push your changes into it.
- If you forget to dismount and push changes into the container on a different computer, you’ll see two containers. In this case, mount the second container somewhere, merge the changes using Mercurial and then commit to the original container.
- You must install TrueCrypt and Dropbox on all computers where you want to use this.
- The cycle “mount-push-dismount” becomes tedious over time.
- If you use HgEclipse, the plug-in will forget the local paths if you forget to mount the container before you start Eclipse.
Posted by digulla 
Dark Views 
Glasshouse
8. April, 2010I just finished reading Glasshouse by Charles Stross.
The book was advertised as the next great thing and it was a nice read. Charles definitely did think a lot of things through like what you will be able to do when you can manipulate matter to the atomic level. As in “manipulate the mind.” We know drugs can change how your brain works but how about you can modify each and every molecule of your brain?
In these terms, the book is a good read. People can backup themselves and if you get killed, you can suddenly find yourself in an odd situation because you don’t knew what happened just that something must have gone wrong. As we software specialists say: Backup early and often.
Overall, I like the book and the presented ideas. Some things don’t seem to make sense but eventually, all puzzles are resolved (with the exception why Robin suddenly wakes up elsewhere; my guess is that he got killed after signing the contract but I’d have expected a message from the people running the experiment in this case which explains the situation to poor Robin).
There is just one glaring bug: The bad guys left a really powerful device in a place where the protagonist has pretty much unlimited, unsupervised access. I understand that high level surveillance wasn’t allowed by the rules of the game at this place but a simple switch which sends a signal “trapdoor is open” would have been more than enough. Of course, the story wouldn’t have worked anymore. Oh well. If you can ignore this, you’re in for some fresh SciFi ideas.
Also, Charles likes deus-ex-machina, so you’ll have several situations where the heroes are in a deadly trap and suddenly, you learn that they did plan for this situation and they get away. Acceptable once or twice but not that often.
Recommendation: Consider to buy.
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