One repository/multiple projects without getting mixed up?

After reading Joel's last article on Mercurial, I'm giving it a shot on XP as a single-user, single-computer source cont开发者_Python百科rol system.

One thing I'd like to check, though, is: It'd be easier to just create a repository of all the tiny projects I keep in eg. C:\VB.Net\, but the result is that the changes I make to the different projects therein (C:\VB.Net\ProjectA\, C:\VB.Net\ProjectB\, etc.) will be mixed in a single changelog.

But if I use a single repository for all projects, when I do diff's or go through the change history, will I be able to filter data so that I only see changes pertaining to a given project? Otherwise, is creating repositories in each project directory the only solution?

Thank you.

I'd keep one repository for each single project. The overhead is minimal (just one hg init for each source code directory, or one right-click in Explorer), and you won't get confused. After all, why should a change to one program affect the version history of a completely unrelated one?

Of course, you can see the history of each file in the Repository Explorer, but I think it goes against the very concept of version control to mix unrelated stuff into one repository.

The right granularity for a DVCS (i.e. a repo where all the history can be cloned) is the project.

If you have several projects which have different development lifecycle (i.e. a change in one does not always affect the other), they should be in their own repo.

In case somebody uses bitbucket, they allow a only one private repository, so you can put all your projects in there if you want them to be private. I would like to hear comments about this scenario.

If you do go with one repository, and only have shallow projects:

cd C:\VB.Net\ProjectA\
hg log *.*

Otherwise, may have to specify specific file extensions to avoid too much recursion:

cd C:\VB.Net\ProjectA\
hg log **/*.cpp

It can be a little slow though... And tags/branches might get confusing if the projects really are separate.

Note: I hardly think "Hello world!" deserves its own repository just because it may be "stand alone".