Question

I use Eclipse to develop in java for Android. I have installed Mercurial to control the source files with other programmers.
But I don’t like how mercurial works, without options to lock the files when someone are modifing it.
I know mercurial works in this way, but we prefer the lock “approach”.
Is there any alternative to mercurial with lock files?
Is there any way to config Eclipse to avoid write on read-only files? If I have a read-only source file, with Eclipse I can open it and write in it.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Quote from Mercurial: The Definitive Guide:

For instance, a distributed revision control system cannot, by its
nature, offer a file locking facility. There is thus no built-in
mechanism to prevent two people from making conflicting changes to a
binary file. If you have a team where several people may be editing
binary files frequently, it may not be a good idea to use Mercurial—or
any other distributed revision control system—to manage those files.

However, right underneath the paragraph, there is a reference to an extension you can use, named “lock/unlock extension”. A quick search located a page that describes the extension, but I didn’t use it yet. The linked page also hints at the existence of another, older extension of the same name.

As a final note, personally, I agree with the quote from the book. If you need file or directory locking in your workflow, trying to use a distributed version control system is only going to create problems for you. You will probably be better off using a more traditional version control system.