Mecurial DVCS - your experiences using it

[Foster]

I'm looking for first hand accounts (that means you, not a friend of another robot teams older brothers neighbor) of using Mecurial the distributed version control system. I'm interested in your experiences with Labview, C++ and Java. Specific things I'm looking for:

What other tools did you use (Netbeans, custom tools, LVDiff, TortiseHg, etc. )
Things that went well
Things that didn't go well
Where / how you hosted a central repository
How your programming team liked/hated it
Did you tag versions, how often?
Tips / best practices you would like to pass on
Are your desktops Windows or Linux based

Thanks!
(And I know this is CD, but I'm interested in Mecurial. I know that GIT rocks and that real programming teams only use Subversion but your team uses a custom Ruby site from another robot teams older brothers neighbor that had the snow not come you would have used more and no the CVS is not part of the 65 lbs weight limit. Thanks! :) )

[LukeS]

Yes, our whole team used it.

In order:
We were developing in Java
We were using the normal Netbeans option. In order to clone between Windows systems, we used Cygwin to set up SSH.
Having actual version tracking is a amazing, you don't have to manage folders with different versions/dates on them, automated merging, cloning is way faster, since you don't copy the Javadocs/compiled files...
Loved it, though some members took a while to grasp the `revert' feature. (``Why'd you delete my commented out code!? I didn't have a backup!'')
No, we didn't tag versions, but you would see things like ``End of Washington DC'' as a commit message.
The default `.hgignore' file just won't do. The one we used is attached (rename to `.hgignore', place in the root directory of your project) The file is hidden on *NIX, idk on Windows. Also, since Windows and *NIX newlines are different, Netbeans automatically does this, so you end up having to make an empty commit with the message ``convert to UNIX newlines, ignore...''
We were on both *NIX and Windows XP systems.


I think I still prefer GIT, but HG is close, and integrated with Netbeans.

Happy Hacking!