How can I check existing patches into a Mercurial queue repository - mercurial

I have an existing queue directory with a number patches already in it. I am about to fold them into a single commit but I would like to preserve the original patches before I do that. How can I do that?
This is what I tried so far:
$ hg ci --mq
abort: no queue repository
Then, since I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, I tried to create the patch repository manually:
$ cd .hg/patches/
/Users/me/Code/my-project/.hg/patches
$ hg init
$ cd -
/Users/me/Code/my-project
But when I try to commit, it won't let me:
$ hg ci --mq
nothing changed
The patch repository can be deleted if the solution requires it. It's empty so that's safe to do.

Related

Mercurial Newbie confused

I am familiar with TFS and Vault, but having just started using Mercurial I seem to be getting into a bit of a mess.
Heres what I (think) I've done:
-Created a central repository on bitbucket.org
-On my desktop PC, cloned repository from bitbucket, added files, commit them, push them to bitbucket
-On my laptop, cloned repository from bitbucket, pulled files, added more files, commit them, push them to bitbucket
I've continued to add, edit etc on the different computers.
Now I've noticed that some files from each computer are not in the bitbucket repository, and therefore only in the local repository. No amount of pulling and pushing seems to get it into the bitbucket repository.
What is the most likely thing I've done wrong?
Is there a way to 'force' by changes up to the bitbucket repository?
Did they get into your local repository? I suspect not, i.e. they were new files that were not added to the commit. Use hg add to add them to the changeset before committing or whatever the equivalent is for whatever mercurial interface you're using.
Edit:
Here's the help from Mercurial:
C:\Users\Bert>hg add --help
hg add [OPTION]... [FILE]...
add the specified files on the next commit
Schedule files to be version controlled and added to the repository.
The files will be added to the repository at the next commit. To undo an
add before that, see "hg forget".
If no names are given, add all files to the repository.
...
See Mercurial: The Definitive Guide (a.k.a. the hg "red book") for more info:
http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/mercurial-in-daily-use.html
Telling Mercurial which files to track
Mercurial does not work with files in your repository unless you tell it to manage them. The hg status command will tell you which files Mercurial doesn't know about; it uses a “?” to display such files.
To tell Mercurial to track a file, use the hg add command. Once you have added a file, the entry in the output of hg status for that file changes from “?” to “A”.
$ hg init add-example
$ cd add-example
$ echo a > myfile.txt
$ hg status
? myfile.txt
$ hg add myfile.txt
$ hg status
A myfile.txt
$ hg commit -m 'Added one file'
$ hg status
use "hg -v help add" to show global options

Mercurial Patch Creation and Usage

I have come across a problem that I "think" can only be resolved using patches.
I cloned a project from our main repository, made quite a few changes (updates, deletion of files & directory and additions) to it. These changes are not even committed. The problem is, project from the main repository has been deleted/removed and recreated as a new project (name is same, all the directory structures everything is same as before). I cloned that project again from the main repository and would like to transfer all my uncommitted changes to it.
I am still exploring the hg patch to resolve that. It would be helpful if someone could confirm that creating and adding a patch IS the right approach to this, any resources explaining the process would be of great help.
You're correct — a patch is what you need to transfer the information from one repository to another (unrelated) repository. This will work since the files are the same, as you note.
So, to transfer your uncommitted changes from your old clone, you do
$ hg diff -g > uncommited.patch
$ cd ../new
$ hg import --no-commit ../old/uncomitted.patch
That will restore the information saved in the patch. This includes information about files that are added or renamed in the old clone.
The following steps can be performed with a standard Mercurial install:
Commit the changes in your local repository. Note the revision number.
Use "hg export -r REV >patch.diff" to create a patch.
Clone the new repository.
Use "hg import patch.diff" to apply the patch to the new repository.
Example
C:\>hg init example
C:\>cd example
C:\example>echo >file1
C:\example>hg ci -Am file1
adding file1
C:\example>hg clone . ..\example2
updating to branch default
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
C:\example>rd /s/q .hg
C:\example>hg init
C:\example>hg ci -Am same-but-different
adding file1
At this point example and example2 have identical contents, but the repositories are unrelated to each other due to deleting and reinitializing the .hg folder.
Now make some changes and commit them in one of the repositories, then export them as a patch:
C:\example>echo >>file1
C:\example>echo >file2
C:\example>hg ci -Am changes
adding file2
C:\example>hg export -r 1 >patch.diff
Below shows that the other repository can't pull the changes, because of the reinitialization. It can, however, apply the patch successfully:
C:\example>cd ..\example2
C:\example2>hg pull
pulling from c:\example
searching for changes
abort: repository is unrelated
C:\example2>hg import ..\example\patch.diff
applying ..\example\patch.diff
I would first make copies of everything so you have a way of backtracking.
Then, in the working copy with the changes, I would first delete the .hg directory, then copy in the .hg directory from the new repo. This basically transfers all of the changed files into the new repo without the need to delete any files and directories.
You will still need to tell the repo about whether to remove any files marked as missing. You will also have to handle renames manually. If this is a small number of operations, it's easier than trying to use the patch method.
Once this is done, commit your changes and push, if necessary.
seems like what you want is patch queues. In that you have uncommitted changes, and you want to pull from the new repo before committing them....
$ hg qinit -c # initialize mq for your repo containing the uncommitted changes
$ hg qnew name_of_patch # create patch that contains your uncommitted changes
$ hg qpop # resets your working dir back to the parent changeset
no worries though, your changes are safe and sound in .hg/patches/name_of_patch to see for yourself.....
$ cat .hg/patches/name_of_patch
now pull in the new repo
$ hg pull -u http://location.of.new/repo # pull in changes from new repo update working dir
$ hg qpush # apply your uncommitted changes to new repo
If you are lucky you will have no merge conflicts and you can go ahead and commit the patch by....
$ hg qfinish -a # change all applied patches to changeset
And then if you want....
$ hg push http://location.of.new/repo
If the repos are unrelated, just init a patch repo on your new repo. and manually copy the patch in and add it to .hg/patches/series file.
assuming patch was created. clone new repo
$ hg clone http://location.of.new/repo ./new_repo
init patch repo
$ cd ./new_repo && hg qinit -c
copy patch
$ cp ../old_repo/.hg/patches/name_of_patch .hg/patches/
edit series file using an editor of some sort
$ your_favorite_editor .hg/patches/series
name_of_patch # <---put this in the series file
apply your patch to new repo
$ hg qpush
if no merge conflicts and you are convinced it works
$ hg qfinish -a
If the layout is the same, you can just copy all the files over (excluding .hg) and then use hg addrem.
Try to look into the MQ plugin, it does exactly this if I recall. I've never had a use for that though, so I can't say.
If the old repository was simply moved/cloned to a new URL then you could simply change the remote repository you talk to the new one.
If, however, it was recreated from the ground up (even with the same structure) then I don't believe Mercurial has any built-in functionality to help you here. Mercurial patches reference specific changesets which won't exist in your new repository.
You could use a merge tool to perform the diff and bring across any changes you made.
Edited To answer the question in the comment:
When you clone the repository you are taking a complete snapshot of the entire change history - along with the associated change-set IDs, etc.
Mercurial tracks changes by change-sets to the repository, rather than at the file level like Subversion.
If you clone, then you can easily push/merge into another repository that was also cloned from the same source.
If you recreated the repository then the change IDs won't match, and can't be merged in Hg.
The only option in this scenario would be to use a Merge tool which will let you see mismatches in files/folder structure.
Also: Worth pointing out http://hginit.com/ because it explains (indirectly) some of this.

In Mercurial how do I extract a single file's changes from a Changeset to apply to another branch?

I have a large commit of many files on one branch, I need to transfer the modifications of a single file in that changeset to another branch. How can I do this? I am mostly using TortoiseHg but commandline solutions are also fine.
If I go to the changeset in TortoiseHg and select the file I can see the diffs I want to transfer, but not a way to actually apply them.
You can get the patch for just that file using:
hg log -r THEREVISIONWITHLOTSOFCHANGES -p -I path/to/justthatfile > justthatfile.patch
which you can then import on whatever branch you want by doing:
hg update anotherbranch
hg import --no-commit justthatfile.patch
hg commit
The most basic solution is to dump the patch of the file, apply it to the current working revision, and commit it (assuming you're at the root of the repository):
$ hg up <revision-to-apply-the-patch-to>
$ hg diff -c <revision-containing-the-patch> <files-to-include> | patch -p0
$ hg ci -m "Transplanting selected changes from <revision-contain...>"
The drawback of this method is that it isn't very obvious what you've done from a revision history perspective. A good commit message helps here, but the history graph gives no hint about the process of transplanting some changes. In that case merging and reverting may be a better solution:
$ hg up <revision-to-apply-the-patch-to>
$ hg merge -r <revision-containing-the-patch>
$ hg revert --no-backup <files-to-exclude>
$ hg ci -m "Merge in changes of <files-to-include>"
Probably there are more solutions to do this -- these two came to my mind first.

Can't branch a single file with Mercurial?

is this possible with Mercurial? and which Version Control system can do this besides Clearcase?
David is correct that you can't have a branch that exists on only a single file, but it's worth pointing out that people often have branches that alter only a single file. Since the branch metadata is stored in the changeset, and since the changeset contains only a delta (change), having a branch that alters only a single files is nearly instantanous to create, update, commit, and merge, plus it takes up almost no space on disk.
Resultingly, it's a very common way to handle per-customer configurations. Keep the tiny change for them in a branch, and merge from main, where development happened, into that branch, whenever you want to update their deployment.
How you could use MQ:
$ hg qnew -m "Changes for client0" client0
... change the file ...
$ hg qref # update the client0 patch with the changes
$ hg qpop # pop the changes off the queue stack
... develop like normal ...
... client0 asks for a build ...
$ hg qpu # apply client0's patch
$ make release
$ hg qpop
It would get a bit finicky if you've got to deal with a lot of clients… But it may be worth considering.
The other thing you could do, of course, is just commit a bunch of .diff files:
... make changes for client 0 ...
$ hg diff > client0.diff
$ hg revert --all
$ hg add client0.diff
$ hg ci -m "Adding client0 changes"
... develop ...
... client0 asks for a build ...
$ patch -p1 < client0.diff
$ make release
$ hg revert --all
No, it's not possible. A branch in Mercurial is a snapshot of the entire repository state.
You could do it with CVS, though, as CVS tracks changes on a per-file basis :)

mercurial: how to synchronize mq patches from a master repo as mq patches to a set of clone repos

I have to run a dozen of different build tests on a code base maintained in a mercurial repository. I don't want to run serially these tests on same repository because they modify a set of common files and I want to run them in parallel on different machines. Also, after all tests are run I want to have access to latest test results from those test work areas. Currently I'm cloning the master repository a dozen of times and run in each clone one different test. Before each test execution I do a pull/update/purge preparation sequence in order to start the test on latest clean state. That's good for me.
I'm also preparing new changes using mq extension that I would test on all clones as above before committing them. For testing some ready candidate mq patches I want somehow to deploy/synchronize them to be available in test clones and apply those ready for testing using some guard before running the test.
Did anybody do this synchronization before? What's the most simple way to do it? Do I need to have versioned mq patches for that?
patches can be maintained in their own repository provided you passed the "-c" switch to qinit like so
hg qinit -c
You may still be able to create a patch repo after the fact via
cd .hg/patches
hg init
hg addremove
hg commit -m "my patches"
But I haven't ever tried that personally.
then .hg/patches can be treated like any other mercurial repository. so I think you could probably roll some shell scripting. to get into the .hg dir of your cloned repos and do a
hg clone http://centralrepo.com/patch_repo ./patches
Here is the solution that I've implemented. Few notes:
all patches guarded with ready_for_testing AND those unguarded are applied for testing.
using versioned repos is better because we can make abstraction of queue repository implementation
I use mercurial 1.5.1
master repo is in master dir
clone repos are in clone-x dirs
Here are the steps (some could be optional):
once: put patches in master repository under versioning using mercurial:
a. hg -R master init --mq #no commit happen here, can be done later
b. hg -R master commit --mq --addremove --message 'initial patch queue' #make them visible to clone repos
for each clone, once after clone creation finishes: assuming no patches created yet on clones, initialize mq sub-repository:
a. hg clone master\.hg\patches clone-x\.hg\patches
b. hg -R clone-x qselect ready_for_testing
for each change ready in master (patch created/imported in mq repo): do this before launching tests for it:
a. review/update guards of mq patches: those included for testing should be unguarded or with +ready_for_testing
b. hg -R master commit --mq -A #make them visible to clone repos
for each clone, for each [test] iteration for each clone: do this preparation sequence before running the actual test:
a. hg -R clone-x qpop --all --force
b. hg -R clone-x pull
c. hg -R clone-x update --clean
d. hg -R clone-x purge --all
e. hg -R clone-x pull --mq
f. hg -R clone-x update --mq
g. hg -R clone-x qpush --all
As of Mercurial version 1.5, you can create a patch queue repository in an already existing Mercurial repo using the following command:
hg init --mq
It is OK to have queued patches when you issue that command.