Fixing file rename mistake with mercuial - mercurial

I have a situation where I renamed a few files I was tracking in a mercurial repo without using hg rename command (just doing it via the file system).
This occured several revisions ago
Now I want to return to a revision prior to the file renames, fix a bug, and then rebuild that old revision
problem i have is that i am getting error messages along the lines of:
remote changed file.txt which local deleted
use (c)hanged version or leave (d)eleted?
Is there a way I can fix the mistake I made when renaming the files all those revisions ago?

Depends on whether you committed the deletion of the files, but I assume you didn't and it doesn't seem so.
Then you can simply revert them in order to restore them to your working dir: hg revert file.txt. After that you can update to the previous revision without this question popping up. Alternatively just update to the previous revision you want to fix and accept the (c)changed version from remote.
If you want the rename to be permanent and also tracked by the repository, then commit that rename. Use hg addremove, possibly check with --dry-run first what it does so that no unwanted changes are added and commit the renaming of the files. Then go and update to the old revision and do whatever changes you want to commit there.

Related

Mercurial tracking file removal

Can I say "deleting this file is part of this commit" in hg? I know about hg rm, but it seems to only remove tracking of a file, not track its removal.
Concretely, if I have a repository containing file t in two places (A and B), and at A say hg rm t, and commit, and push, and at B say hg pull -u, file t will be there. :-(
I can't imagine anyone wanting that behaviour actually, but that's not the question. The question is: can I somehow sync working trees via hg, or only existing files?
If you pull, the deleted file will be deleted in your history, but not in your sources, locally. You have to update (hg up) for that.
If you have modified this file, and not committed it, Mercurial will tell you that you have uncommited changes, it won't be able to update.
Once it's commited, the deleted file will conflicts with the modified file, you'll be asked either you want to keep the modified file, or delete it.

how to always update a given file in a mercurial pull/update?

I have a file (some kind of database) which is updated as developers test their code and pushed to a central mercurial repository.
I would like everyone to reuse this file and therefore whenever there is a pull / update from our central repository the local version should be replaced by the one stored centrally. In other words I would like to do a hg update -C for that file only, and having it done automatically upon a pull.
Is this possible to do with mercurial?
Developers can add a hook that does this, but you can't make them (unless you have control over their machines).
Something like this in a clone's .hg/hgrc file will delete the local file so the update replaces it fresh:
[hooks]
preupdate = rm path/to/databasefile
Keep in mind, of course, that update will put in place the version of the file as it appeared in the changeset to which the user is updating. So if you do hg update --rev 0 you'll get the very first version of that file, not the one in the most recent revision.
As an aside, usually if there's a file that changes a lot and is unumergeable you're better off having it be an untracked/ignored file that's fetched out of band -- for example, have your launch script download the latest version.

How to undo all added files in Mercurial

Say I type hg add in Mercurial, and there a bunch of untracked files in my working directory that are not ignored. What is the easiest way to un-add all those files without explicitly typing the name of each file?
Can I just un-add them all with one command?
Preface
You must always ask questions, which contain as much information as possible. Because now your question, depending from some conditions, may have totally different answers.
Case One - no local modifications in already versioned files, only added (and not committed) files
hg revert will return your working directory to the state after the last commit, undoing all changes it it.
Case One - local edits, which you want to save and occasionally added files
Read about filesets in Mercurial.
Use fileset in the hg forget command, something like hg forget "set:added()".
Use hg revert or hg forget on the files (both do the same for a file you ran hg add on). To avoid typing out the filenames, you can use a fileset like this:
$ hg revert "set:added()"
This will revert the file back to how it looked in the working copy parent revision, i.e., it will become unknown again.
hg revert -r .^ path-to-file will revert the commit from the commit-set.
then commit and submit (if using jelly fish) and you'll see the files removed from the changeset. I don't know why .^ works yet, but somebody will probably know.
You could always just re-clone your repository and then replace (delete existing and then copy new) the .hg directory in your working folder with the one from the fresh clone... (assuming you have no pending commits..)

in mercurial what is the best way to ignore changes to a file without removing the working copy from anyone's repository

I don't want this file to be removed from other developer's machines, but I don't want it tracked anymore either. It is basically a setting file, that shouldn't have been checked in in the first place.
I think I have to tell the other developers to back up this file. Then I can do a remove, and add it to the .hgignore. Then they have to put the file back into their working directory.
It seems like hg forget would only work for my machine, and then next time another developer does a pull it would wipe out their file.
Any tips?
They don't need to back it up. It's backed up in the repository. You might want to get them to commit their latest version before they pull from you so they don't lose their latest changes. When they lose their file they can just do hg log <file> and then hg revert <latest revision - 1> <file> to get it back.
It seems like hg forget would only work for my machine, and then next time another developer does a pull it would wipe out their file.
Yes, non-versioned file will be saved (some time) only in your WC
If you don't want kill file and just ignore, you can
use -X filename on commit by hand (or write in aliases section)
install (on all workplaces) Exclude Extension (semi-automated solution from p.1)

Mercurial bulk delete

I've just recently moved a lot of my Views and Controllers into more appropriate locations and am now wanting to pull down recent changes from our central repo.
I've done a hg pull which worked fine and asked me to do a hg update to bring the changes down locally. This in turn informed me that I needed to do a hg merge however when I try this, I get a message stating that
abort: outstanding uncommitted changes
When I check this using hg status I see in the list all of the files that I've moved (so they're now deleted from their old location).
How do I tell Mercurial that I've removed these files? Do I have to go through each one of them and manually do a remove? Is this something that's possible using only the command line rather than doing it with a GUI tool?
From the command line to automatically hg rm the files you've removed you'd:
hg addremove
It's likely your GUI (you didn't say which you use) exposes that functionality too.
However, that's not what's causing your message. You have some already made local changes that mercurial does know about (unlike the removed files which it doesn't know about until you tell it), and you need a hg commit before you can merge.