When I install a package like xulrunner in scm version, the hg clone operation takes 15 minutes between /var/paludis/distfiles/hg-src and /var/tmp/paludis/[...]/work. So it is faster, and cleverer to do a hg archive than a hg clone between those two directories. I have attached the patch. Reproducible: Always
Created attachment 257861 [details, diff] makes the local copy for mercurial faster
No, no and no. Some builds expect to be able to extract exact version information or be operated from a clone, not unversioned directory. It's interesting why it takes so long, `hg clone' should use hard links when possible: "For efficiency, hardlinks are used for cloning whenever the source and destination are on the same filesystem (note this applies only to the repository data, not to the working directory)." (hg help clone)
