I am working on BRANCH_A. I want to move the last 50 commits on this branch to a new branch BRANCH_B and revert BRANCH_A to the previous commit before these. What is the best method to achieve the same? Is it a good way?
Supposing that you just want BRANCH_A to be at the state of "HEAD - 50 commits" and you do not care if those commits appear in the history, then here is a simple solution:
For having all the commits on a new branch BRANCH_B you can simply create this branch while at the HEAD of BRANCH_A:
$ hg branch BRANCH_B
For restoring a previous state on BRANCH_A you can switch back to the HEAD of BRANCH_A, and commit a new changeset that will undo all the ones you do not want, this is done with hg backout:
$ hg update BRANCH_A
$ hg log -r 'branch(BRANCH_A) and head()~50 and not merge()'
$ hg backout -r 'branch(BRANCH_A) and head()~50 and not merge()'
$ hg commit -m"removed from .. to .."
You might have conflicts if changes happen in similar zones.
If you do want to rewrite history, you can either use the rebase or convert extensions to change names, remove commits etc. It all depends if you are working only locally or if you need to push to a server which is used by other people as well (in which case it is not advised to rewrite history).
Without editing history, simply:
Close the tip of BRANCH_A.
Create a named BRANCH_B off the closed tip of BRANCH_A.
Check in new commits to BRANCH_A starting from the node before the 50 commits.
Related
I know that when you update to a previous revision, you create a new branch on your next commit. What happens when you clone an earlier revision? Will your next commit (or push) create a new branch?
The reason I ask is because our Tip is currently broken, so until it gets fixed, I was planning to do the following:
hg clone -r <prev_rev> <Tip>
# make changes
hg commit -m "my changes" -u me
# wait for Tip to get fixed
hg pull
hg merge
hg push
Will this work? Or will it end up creating a new branch or a dangling head? I would like to avoid doing either of these things.
Yes, that will create a branch, at least in the sense of having a "fork" in the history of the repository.
The branch will not be assigned a new branch name, but that in itself is not usually important in terms of understanding what the history will look like in a repository.
If your original repo was:
A-B-C-D
Then you do a hg clone -r C... and a new commit, you will end up with:
A-B-C-(D)
\
E
Now, since you have cloned only up to C, that specific local repository may not include D yet. But when you eventually synchronize it with another that will have to be dealt with. If you PULL, then you will get D in that clone. If you try to push HG will warn you about creating a new remote head for which the usual approach is to merge.
There is nothing wrong with this approach. If you need to work around an issue in tip for the time being, this is a reasonable way to do it. But you don't really need a new clone, you could just hg update C and work from there, which might be easier.
I cloned a project to my local directory and made a lot of changes. My current goal is to push my changed code to a new branch in the remote repository. And eventually this new branch will be merged back to default.
My problem is, because of some stupid effort in the past a few weeks to try to recover some missing files, I end up with a few branch names that I don't want being shown in public.
Here's what I have:
$hg branches
dev-v02 197:xxxxx
dev2 194:xxxxx
dev 183:xxxxx
qa 189:xxxxx
$hg branch
dev-v02
My question is, if I push my current branch dev-v02 to the remote repository by "hg push --new-branch", and this branch later get merged back to default, will the unwanted branches show up in history of default? And if so, is there a safe way to purge them?
I do NOT want to discard my changes. I just don't want the unwanted branches showing up in "hg branches" or "hg his" commands by whoever later clones the project from the remote repository. I searched online and found "hg strip" but I couldn't tell from the article if it would also remove the changes I've made. Thanks.
Edit: I just cloned my local repository by "hg clone -r 197 original-dir dest-dir" as suggested by both kevin and chessbot and now hg branches shows:
dev-02 192:xxxxx
qa 187:xxxxx (inactive)
I guess "qa" remains because I had pushed it to the remote as a QA branch and closed it later, and I just have to live with that. I will push from this new directory from now on. Thanks guys for your help.
Try hg push --new-branch -b dev-v02 to specify that you're pushing only that branch.
(See: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/help/push)
Another thing you could do: Clone the repository locally on your machine, strip out the branches you don't want, and then push that clone to the server. Then you retain your history locally without pushing it to everyone else.
It depends.
Branches are permanently associated with a commit. The branch is part of the commit, and contributes to the hash. Changing the branch of a commit in the past would alter all commit hashes from that point forward. This is quite different from Git, where a branch is little more than an ephemeral pointer to a HEAD. Such pointers are implemented in Mercurial as bookmarks.
If the unwanted branches appear on commits which are (ancestors of) commits you want to publish, there is very little you can do, short of recreating the history with all-new hashes. This could (for instance) be done with hg export and hg import, along with local cloning and (probably) a certain amount of shell scripting. More efficiently, you could use the convert extension to automate the process. Since this changes commit hashes, it will likely cause serious problems if any of the commits have already been distributed publicly.
If you have no interest in sharing the offending commits, you can simply not publish them. This can be done with selective pushing. However, since you'll always have to manually exclude those commits every time you push, it's probably safer to clone and strip (or clone selectively with the -r flag). You can then push from your partial clone with impunity. Assuming you have a sufficiently recent version of Mercurial, you can also force the commits into the secret phase, so that they will not be pushed:
hg phase -fs revisions
You don't want to use hg strip, because it permanently removes the commits from the history (see Editing History in the Mercurial wiki)
If I were you, I would close the branches instead:
hg up -C badbranch
hg commit --close-branch -m 'close badbranch, this approach never worked'
hg up -C default
(source: Pruning branches in the Mercurial wiki)
After closing a branch, hg branches doesn't show it anymore.
If you do want to see closed branches, use the -c parameter:
hg branches -c
Disadvantage:
hg his still shows closed branches.
You could use the -b parameter though, to show only the default branch:
hg his -b default
If you do an hg pull and then an hg update (or an hg merge), is there a way to back this out? Ie: revert your repository to the state prior to doing the hg pull?
I believe you can do hg update -r n where you would specify the changeset prior to the pull as n. Though I'm guessing this will still leave the changesets in your repository but this isn't really what we want. ??
hg strip will remove revisions from a repository. Like all powerful commands, its dangerous, so be careful.
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/StripExtension
Also see:
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/EditingHistory
If you catch your mistake immediately (or reasonably soon), you can just use hg strip REV to roll back the latest (one or more) changes. ...
Ok, you can't rollback because you've done a commit. What you can do is use 'hg strip' which is part of mq (after 2.8 strip is in it's own extension), or use mq to remove the changes. Either way I suggest you do everything on another clone, just in case.
To do strip, update to a revision that you want to keep, and then
hg strip <REV>
where <REV> is the first revision you want to remove. It will remove that one and all decendents (including your merge commit).
Alternatively you can
hg qnew (if you don't already have a patch queue)
hg qimport <REV>
which will import a single revision into the patch queue. You can then add more, and then use the mq commands to edit, rearrange, delete, or whatever you want to do with those revisions. qdel deletes the current patch.
Edit: Obviously, you'll need to enable the MQ extension for both of these, unless you're using 2.8 or later. In that case strip is in the strip extension, and mq in the mq extension. Both are shipped with the standard installation.
hg --rollback can be used to undo the last transaction so as long as your hg pull is still the most recent transaction then you can use that. This command should be used with care though. See here for some more details.
you can:
hg update -C <version>
see the mercurial FAQ.
If you want to remove all traces of the pull form your history then you need to use an extension as Bert F suggests (the philosophy in mercurial is to never change history)
if you dont mind history containing your mistake you have two slightly different options hg update -C -r which will create a new branch at the version you specify or hg revert -r which will stay on the same branch but create a new uncommited change undoing everything.
There is a commit that just didn't work, so I want to abandon it without deleting it from history.
I have updated from an earlier revision and committed, thus creating a new head.
I don't have branches, I don't want branches, I just want to simply go on with the new head exactly as it is, nothing fancy, no merge, no worries, just go on forgetting the previous one.
I can't seem to find how to do that, and I'm starting to believe it can't be done. All I find is stuff about branches, or stuff about merging.
Update your repository to the head with the revision that you want to forget about, then use hg commit --close-branch to mark that (anonymous) branch as closed. Then update to the head of the branch that you do want, and continue working.
You can still see the closed branch if you use the -c option to hg heads, but it won't show up by default and hg merge will know not try to merge with the closed head.
You will need to use hg push --force the first time you push this closed head to another repository since you are actually create additional heads in the remote repository when you push. So tell Mercurial that this is okay with --force. People who pull the closed head wont be bothered by any warnings.
I know you don't want to work with branches at this stage, but that's exactly what you've done. When you went back to an earlier version and committed something that worked you created a branch - an unnamed branch, but a branch all the same.
There's no problem with just carrying on just as you are and not worrying about having multiple heads, but if you want to tidy things up so you don't accidentally pick the wrong head one time then you can kill off the old branch.
There's a good section in the Mercurial documentation that takes you through a number of options around Pruning Dead Branches.
I think the best option for you is to mark the old branch as "closed". If your old head is revision "123" then:
hg update -r 123
hg commit --close-branch -m 'Closing old branch'
hg update -C default
First of all, type:
hg heads
Imagine, you have three heads listed:
changeset: 223:d1c3deae6297
user: Your name <your#email.com>
date: Mon Jun 09 02:24:23 2014 +0200
summary: commit description #3
changeset: 123:91c5402959z3
user: Your name <your#email.com>
date: Sat Dec 23 16:05:38 2013 +0200
summary: commit description #2
changeset: 59:81b9804156a8
user: Your name <your#email.com>
date: Sat Sep 14 13:14:40 2013 +0200
summary: commit description #1
Let's say, you want to keep the last head active (223) and close the rest.
You would then do as follows:
Close head #59
hg up -r 59
hg ci --close-branch -m "clean up heads; approach abandoned"
Close head #123
hg up -r 123
hg ci --close-branch -m "clean up heads; approach abandoned"
Commit the changes
hg push
Don't forget to switch to the right head at the end
hg up -r 223
And you're done.
You want to use hg backout. This removes the changes made by the changeset from any child changeset.
Check this out for a good explanation.
Mercurial Backout
An alternative to closing or stripping the unwanted branch would be to merge it in a way that totally discards its effects, but leaves it in history. This approach will allow those unwanted changes to propagate in a push - so only use this if that is the intended effect.
Let's say the changeset history looks like this:
1-2-3-4-5-6
\
7-8-*
and it is 5 and 6 which are no longer wanted.
You can do this:
hg up 8
hg merge -r 6 -t :local
hg commit ...
which will create this:
1-2-3-4-5-6
\ \
7-8-9-*
The update to 8 ensures you are working at the desired head in history, which you want to keep.
The -t :local instructs hg to use the merge "tool" called local which tells it to ignore changes from the other branch, i.e., the one NOT represented by the current working folder state. More info.
Thus the unwanted changes in 5 and 6 are preserved in history but do not affect anything more recent.
Both Niall's and Nick's answers are straight on. Because I find myself creating lots of dangling heads, I ended up writing an alias to close heads more easily. By adding this to your .hgrc:
[alias]
behead = !REV=$($HG id -i); $HG update $# -q && $HG ci --close-branch -m "Closing dead head" && $HG update $REV -q
(if you already have an [alias] section, you can append to it instead)
You can now close a head in one single-command (and without having to update to a different changeset manually) like this:
$ hg behead 123
Note: the alias takes advantage of the fact that Mercurial aliases can be shell commands. This means that this will probably only work on UNIX, not on Windows.
This is a use case for the Evolve extension. It's currently not bundled with Mercurial, so it is technically a third party extension. But it's being used quite heavily by a bunch of people, including Mercurial developers, is being very actively developed, and isn't going anywhere.
With the Evolve extension, you simply do
hg prune -r revname
and get on with your life. The cset will still be there, but obsoleted. It won't be visible unless you pass the --hidden option to Mercurial commands, and by default won't be pushed to remote repositories. Though I think you can force it if you really want to.
If the cset you are pruning has ancestors you want to keep, then you'll have to run hg evolve to rebase those changesets. hg evolve will do so automatically. Otherwise, you don't have to do anything.
You may clone your corrupted repo to a new one without cloning that unwanted head. Then remove old repository, move newly created clone to the original place and continue working with it. This will take some time, but you'll get a perfectly clean repository without a sign of that unwanted revision.
hg clone --rev myGoodResition myDirtyRepo myCleanRepo
I have run into this issue many times when I want to behead a head that was created in error. I always want to see it disappear off the face of the Earth.
On your local copy, get the latest and then:
Find the beginning of a head you want to strip (where a new neck starts to branch off), get the revision number
Strip it.
Source: TipsAndTricks.
Source: PruningDeadBranches#Using_strip.
hg --config extensions.hgext.mq= strip -n <rev>
Make a trivial file update (add a whitespace to a file), commit and push.
Your repo should now have the head stripped. The last step is important as stripping doesn't create any changes you can push to your central repository. Without the last step you only have stripped the head locally.
So I keep making a silly mistake in Mercurial. Often times, I'll start work without doing an "hg pull" and an "hg update." When I try to push my changes, I get an error.
Is there any way to delete my local commits so I can avoid creating multiple heads, branches, etc? I just want to delete my local commits, merge my changes with the tip, and then re-commit. Sounds simple, right? I can't seem to find any way to easily delete local commits so I can cleanly merge with the tip.
Again, I'm only trying to delete local commits made with "hg ci". I don't want to modify files, revert, etc.
Enable the "strip" extension and type the following:
hg strip #changeset# --keep
Where #changeset# is the hash for the changeset you want to remove. This will remove the said changeset including changesets that descend from it and will leave your working directory untouched. If you wish to also revert your committed code changes remove the --keep option.
For more information, check the Strip Extension.
If you get "unkown command 'strip'" you may need to enable it. To do so find the .hgrc or Mercurial.ini file and add the following to it:
[extensions]
strip =
Note that (as Juozas mentioned in his comment) having multiple heads is normal workflow in Mercurial. You should not use the strip command to battle that. Instead, you should merge your head with the incoming head, resolve any conflicts, test, and then push.
The strip command is useful when you really want to get rid of changesets that pollute the branch. In fact, if you're in this question's situation and you want to completely remove all "draft" change sets permanently, check out the top answer, which basically suggests doing:
hg strip 'roots(outgoing())'
If you are using Hg Tortoise just activate the extension "strip" in:
File/Settings/Extensions/
Select strip
Then select the bottom revision from where you want to start striping, by doing right click on it, and selecting:
Modify history
Strip
Just like this:
In this example it will erase from the 19th revision to the last one commited(22).
Modern answer (only relevant after Mercurial 2.1):
Use Phases and mark the revision(s) that you don't want to share as secret (private). That way when you push they won't get sent.
In TortoiseHG you can right click on a commit to change its phase.
Also: You can also use the extension "rebase" to move your local commits to the head of the shared repository after you pull.
As everyone else is pointing out you should probably just pull and then merge the heads, but if you really want to get rid of your commits without any of the EditingHistory tools then you can just hg clone -r your repo to get all but those changes.
This doesn't delete them from the original repository, but it creates a new clone that doesn't have them. Then you can delete the repo you modified (if you'd like).
I came across this problem too. I made 2 commit and wanted to rollback and delete both commits.
$ hg rollback
But hg rollback just rolls back to the last commit, not the 2 commits. At that time I did not realize this and I changed the code.
When I found hg rollback had just rolled back one commit, I found I could use hg strip #changeset#. So, I used hg log -l 10 to find the latest 10 commits and get the right changeset I wanted to strip.
$ hg log -l 10
changeset: 2499:81a7a8f7a5cd
branch: component_engine
tag: tip
user: myname<myname#email.com>
date: Fri Aug 14 12:22:02 2015 +0800
summary: get runs from sandbox
changeset: 2498:9e3e1de76127
branch: component_engine
user: other_user_name<name#email.com>
date: Mon Aug 03 09:50:18 2015 +0800
summary: Set current destination to a copy incoming exchange
......
$ hg strip 2499
abort: local changes found
What does abort: local changes found mean? It means that hg found changes to the code that haven't been committed yet. So, to solve this, you should hg diff to save the code you have changed and hg revert and hg strip #changeset#. Just like this:
$ hg diff > /PATH/TO/SAVE/YOUR/DIFF/FILE/my.diff
$ hg revert file_you_have_changed
$ hg strip #changeset#
After you have done the above, you can patch the diff file and your code can be added back to your project.
$ patch -p1 < /PATH/TO/SAVE/YOUR/DIFF/FILE/my.diff
You can get around this even more easily with the Rebase extension, just use hg pull --rebase and your commits are automatically re-comitted to the pulled revision, avoiding the branching issue.
hg strip is what you are looking for. It's analogous of git reset if you familiar with git.
Use console:
You need to know the revision number. hg log -l 10. This command shows the last 10 commits. Find commit you are looking for. You need 4 digit number from changeset line changeset: 5888:ba6205914681
Then hg strip -r 5888 --keep. This removes the record of the commit but keeps all files modified and then you could recommit them.
(if you want to delete files to just remove --keep hg strip -r 5888
If you are familiar with git you'll be happy to use histedit that works like git rebase -i.
[Hg Tortoise 4.6.1]
If it's recent action, you can use "Rollback/Undo" action (Ctrl+U).
In addition to Samaursa's excelent answer, you can use the evolve extension's prune as a safe and recoverable version of strip that will allow you to go back in case you do anything wrong.
I have these alias on my .hgrc:
# Prunes all draft changesets on the current repository
reset-tree = prune -r "outgoing() and not obsolete()"
# *STRIPS* all draft changesets on current repository. This deletes history.
force-reset-tree = strip 'roots(outgoing())'
Note that prune also has --keep, just like strip, to keep the working directory intact allowing you to recommit the files.