Question

Is it possible to successfully use the kbfiles extension without having a kiln server or client? I find some of the changes kbfiles has over bfiles to be desired.

At present, everything seems to work from the command line, without errors. I do a kbfconvert to create the repo, then copy my extensions and hgrc, and then do a push. The .hg\kbfiles folder is created but it never gets populated with files defined by pattern as a kbfile. If I create a new file matching my pattern, it is created/stored as normal, again not appearing in the binary store.

Any help would be appreciated :)

Answer 1

You certainly don't need the Kiln Client to use kbfiles, it stands alone as an extension. You will, however, need a server that speaks the same (pretty basic) protocol. It is not really documented, but if you're up for it, you can implement the server side of it using the source of the Kiln Storage Service.

Answer 2

FWIW, as a hope to get this solution adopted as the "official" Mercurial solution to large binaries in Mercurial, I have started a fork called "HugeFiles" (the name change is because one of the big responses regarding getting it adopted is that a Kiln-specific name was not appropriate and the term "kbfiles" leads one to wonder, "Why am I using this tool for files that only have sizes in the kilobyte range?" -- I actually hope that FogCreek and I will reconcile these divergent development branches at some point; HugeFiles should be completely compatible with Kiln).

It's located on BitBucket here:

https://bitbucket.org/natosha_bard/hugefiles

It's still in the early stages now; you can watch the site for updates. Also note that the versions here may or may not be in synch with what FogCreek is shipping (particularly because I work a lot on the extensions myself and the changes I make don't immediately go back to FogCreek and get incorporated), but it can be a solution for anyone who is desperate for some way to handle large binaries in their Mercurial repositories.

For proof-of-concept testing, there is a store there that just uses anonymous FTP with a hard-coded path of /bfiles for the store location. It's not much, but it's way to see it working on your own server and give you a start to develop a real FTP share (or SSH if you want -- there is already an httpstore as well).