How to submit a sequence of changesets into Review Board (Mercurial)? - mercurial

I want to submit a sequence of changesets as one changeset (patch) into Review Board. How to do that?

The technical term for combining multiple patches into one is "folding". If you want to truly fold a series of commits into one (changing history), then the HistEdit extension provides a way as do Mercurial Queues.
If you're just interested in generating a patch, then you have a few options. You can use hg export (but this will not fold the patches together, but rather dumps a series of patches to console) or you can use hg diff to generate a diff. More precisely,
hg diff -r start:end > summary.patch
will generate a single diff for all the changes in the range start to end. You can replace end with tip to get all changes starting with start. This should even work if there are merge changesets in between. (hg export produces odd output if there are merge changesets in there.)

I would suggest that since you need to submit a sequence of changes in as a single item for review you should diff your final result with either the point that you started making changes or with the latest version of the code - creating a patch. Then attach the patch, details of the version that you diffed with, etc., to the Request for Review form.

Related

Create new mercurial repository cloning SINCE revision

I have a HUGE mercurial repository.
Cloning and some operations are starting to be slow.
I would like to get rid of old commits, but keep the history of revisions since a specific date.
Is there any way to keep the commits SINCE a specific commit on a single branch, and collapse all the older parent commits in a single one?
R1 -> R2 ->R3 ->R4 ->R5 -> R6 -> R7 ->R8 ->Tip
[R1-5] ->R6 ->R7 ->R8 ->Tip
I tried to do such thing using GRAFT, but it did not work (maybe I don't now how to do it properly).
Optional: Is there such an option on Sourcetree?
You cannot clone it to achieve this. But you have basically two options:
history rewrite using histedit (it's an default extension, but needs enabling)
It gives you the option to fold commits, that is combine several one to a single.
convert (which in essence is also a history rewrite)
This gives you the chance to create a new repository with only the selected commits and branches. Thus you can simply leave out the first 4 commits and start with the 5th.
For each also checkout the help shipped with mercurial (hg help histedit, hg help convert).

Create patch for series of existing changesets that were created without using MQ?

I've recently started to work on an open source project which uses Mercurial.
I'm a new user to Mercurial, so I read the HG book and started working.
My goal was to write code and always pull and merge changes from the upstream
so I can stay up-to-date. The area that I am working on is also under heavy
development by others so I do want to merge my changes after a long period of
time. I cloned a repo. So, my workflow is like this:
I created a bookmark mybook
hg up mybook
Write code
3.1 hg commit -m 'new functions'
hg up default
hg pull
hg update
hg up mybook
hg merge default
Go to step 3.
In my mind this is the simplest workflow that allows me to stay up-to-date. I
also have only one HEAD because I always merge.
Since I am not a contributor yet, I am not allowed to push changes to remote
repo.
Recently I wanted to show my work to a project lead and he said send me a patch.
And this is where I am stuck. hg out shows 10 changesets. First of which
appeard already a month ago. They're numbers are 3341, 3342, 3345, 3346, 3349, 3356, 3360, 3365, 3366, 3368. The changeset numer 3368 is the tip.
I've recently read the chapter about the MQ extension. And this extensions seems to be what I need. But the problem is that I wrote code without using the MQ
extension.
So, how can I make use of the MQ extension on already created changesets so that
I can make a patch to send to the project lead so that he can apply it and see
my changes?
I've just issued hg qinit. What's next?
Issueing hg qimport -r 3341 gives
abort: revision 3341 has unmanaged children
Reading the book and googling further does not help me. I need an advice.
PS I've tried not using hg and MQ at all: simple diff -urN old/ new/ but I
want understand how to do it with the MQ.
Thank you.
Yeah, don't use MQ. It's a parallel system, meant for keeping things out of the history, and more important you don't need it.
You were asked for "a patch", not a complete history of your work, so I would recommend sending it in the form of a single before-after diff. hg export will give you a series of diffs, for all the work you've done, including the merges. I find it's far easier to read and review a single diff (before applying it). But instead of plain diff, use hg diff which knows to only look at tracked files, and has a number of other nice features (including the --git option, which provides richer metadata). This should do it:
hg up mybook
hg diff --git -r default > mywork.patch
Before sending it off, do an hg up default and apply the patch to check that it works without conflicts. And mention to the recipient which version of default you are patching against.
Edit: As you can read in the comments, #LazyBadger is a fan of the step-by-step patch generated by export. I prefer the single-step patch
since my history is usually TMI: Nobody cares about all the times I added a forgotten file, or noticed a bug too late and fixed in in the next commit, etc.
Take your pick.

How to view diff of several changsets?

Someone worked on a feature for a few days during which he made several commits. Other people have committed changes too while he was working so his commits are not consecutive.
How can I code review his commits as a whole, without viewing intermediary changes? And I don't want to view changes made by other people.
I can use TortoiseHG's search feature and type the issue number in the search box to locate his 5 changesets. Ideally I'd multi-select the changesets and then right-click and 'show diff' but that does not work.
I don't mind if the solution implies cloning the repository again and rewriting history in order to collapse the changesets (I'd discard that repo after).
Note: we don't want to change our workflow to ensure that features are pushed as a single commit.
Attempt 1:
update to a rev before his work
multi-select his changesets then 'Copy selected as patch'
apply the patch to my working directory
result: that created rejects so that solution is not ideal
Attempt 2:
use 'import to MQ' on the changesets with the intent of qfolding the them
result: 'import to MQ' fails: abort: revision 19630 is the root of more than one branch.
we don't want to change our workflow to ensure that features are pushed as a single commit.
Okay, you can use any workflow, I will just note: "Branch per Task"
will not require "feature in single commit"
eliminates a lot of (future) headache
In current state without cloning|rewriting history you can
forget about GUI
Get (some way) list of all changesets, related to be-reviewed feature
In console use hg diff -c CSET -c CSET2 ... -c CSETN <other options> (where every CSETX is changeset, related to feature

What to do instead of squashing commits in Mercurial

I've got my IDE set to commit locally every time I save anything. I'd ideally like to keep an uncensored record of my idiot fumblings for the rare occasions they may be useful. But most of the time it makes my history way to detailed.
I'd like to know a good strategy to keep that history but be able to ignore it most of the time. My IDE is running my own script every time I save, so I have control over that.
I'm pretty new to Mercurial, so a basic answer might be all I need here. But what are all the steps I should do when committing, merging, and reporting to be able to mostly ignore these automatic commits, but without actually squashing them? Or am I better off giving up and just squashing?
Related question about how to squash with highly rated comment suggesting it might be better to keep that history
Edit - My point here is that if Mercurial wants to keep all your history (which I agree with), it should let you filter that history to avoid seeing the stuff you might be tempted to squash. I would prefer not to squash, I'm just asking for help in a strategy to (in regular usage, though not quite always) make it look as much as possible like I did squash my history.
You want to keep a detailed history in your repo, but you want to have (and be able to export) an idealized history that only contains "reasonable" revsets, right? I can sympathize.
Solution 1: Use tags to mark interesting points in the history, and learn to ignore all the messy bits between them.
Solution 2: Use two branches and merge. Do your development in branch default, and keep a parallel branch release. (You could call it clean, but in effect you are managing releases). Whenever default is in a stable state that you want to checkpoint, switch to branch release and merge into it the current state of default-- in batches, if you wish. If you never commit anything directly to release, there will never be a merge conflict.
(original branch) --o--o--o--o--o--o--o (default)
\ \ \
r ... ... --r--------r (release)
Result: You can update to any revision of release and expect a functioning state. You can run hg log -r release and you will only see the chosen checkpoints. You can examine the full log to see how everything happened. Drawbacks: Because the release branch depends on default, you can't push it to another repo without bringing default with it. Also hg glog -r release will look weird because of the repeated merges.
Solution 3: Use named branches as above, but use the rebase extension instead of merging. It has an option to copy, rather than move outright, the rebased changesets; and it has an option --collapse that will convert a set of revisions into a single one. Whenever you have a set of revisions r1:tip you want to finalize, copy them from default to release as follows:
hg rebase --source r1 --dest release --keep --collapse
This pushes ONE revision at the head of release that is equivalent to the entire changeset from r1 to the head of default. The --keep option makes it a copy, not a destructive rewrite. The advantage is that the release branch looks just as you wanted: nice and clean, and you can push it without dragging the default branch with it. The disadvantage is that you cannot relate its stages to the revisions in default, so I'd recommend method 2 unless you really have to hide the intermediate revisions. (Also: it's not as easy to squash your history in multiple batches, since rebase will move/copy all descendants of the "source" revision.)
All of these require you to do some extra work. This is inevitable, since mercurial has no way of knowing which revsets you'd like to squash.
it should let you filter that history to avoid seeing the stuff you might be tempted to squash
Mercurial has the tools for this. If you just don't want see (in hg log, I suppose) - filter these changesets with revsets:
hg log -r "not desc('autosave')"
Or if you use TortoiseHg, just go View -> Filter Toolbar, and type in "not desc('autosave')" in the toolbar. Voila, your autosave entries are hidden from the main list.
If you actually do want to keep all the tiny changes from every Ctrl-S in the repo history and only have log show the subset of the important ones, you could always tag the "important" changesets and then alias log to log -r tagged(). Or you could use the same principle with some other revset descriptor, such as including the text 'autosave' in the auto-committed messages and using log -r keyword(autosave), which would show you all non-autosaved commits.
To accomplish your goal, at least as I'd approach it, I'd use the mq extension and auto-commit the patch queue repository on every save. Then when you've finished your "idiot fumblings" you can hg qfinish the patch as a single changeset that can be pushed. You should (as always!) keep the changes centered around a single concept or step (e.g. "fixing the save button"), but this will capture all the little steps it took to get you there.
You'd need to
hg qinit --mq once to initialze the patch queue repo (fyi: stored at \.hg\patches\)
hg qnew fixing-the-save-btn creates a patch
then every time you save in your IDE
hg qrefresh to update the patch
hg commit --mq to make the small changeset in the patch queue repo
and when you are done
hg qfinish fixing-the-save-btn converts the patch into a changeset to be pushed
This keeps your fumblings local to your repo complete with what was changed every time you saved, but only pushes a changeset when it is complete. You could also qpop or qpush to change which item you were working on.
If you were to try the squash method, you'd lose the fumbling history when you squashed the changesets down. Either that or you'd be stuck trying to migrate work to/from the 'real' repository, which, I can tell you from experience, you don't want to do. :)
I would suggest you to use branches. When you start a new feature, you create a new branch. You can commit as many and often as you like within that branch. When you are done, you merge the feature branch into your trunk. In this way, you basically separate the history into two categories: one in fine-grain (history in feature branches), and the other in coarse-grain (history in the trunk). You can easily look at either one of them using the command: hg log --branch <branch-name>.

Mercurial cherry picking changes for commit

Say, I made many changes to my code and only need to commit a few of those changes. Is there a way to do it in mercurial? I know that darcs has a feature like this one.
I know hg transplant can do this between branches, but I need something like this for committing code in the present branch and not when adding change sets from some other branch.
If you are using TortoiseHg 1.x for Windows, this feature is implemented beautifully right out of the box (no extensions required).
Run the TortoiseHg Commit Tool.
Choose a file for which you only
want to commit a subset of its
changes.
Click on the Hunk
Selection tab in the preview pane.
Double-click or use the spacebar to
toggle which change hunks should be
included in the commit.
For TortoiseHg 2.x, the Hunk Selection tab is now gone. In its place, is the Shelve tool. It has a few more features than the old hunk selection. Those new features come at the cost of some added complexity.
Note that there is no need to explicitly enable the Mercurial Shelve extension when using this feature. According to Steve Borho (lead TortoiseHg developer) in response to a different TortoiseHg question: "We have a local copy of the shelve extension and call into it directly."
For TortoiseHg 2.7+, this functionality has been improved and re-introduced. It is now built directly into the Commit tool:
Notice in the file list on the left that the top file is checked to indicate it will be included, the second file is unchecked because it will not be included, and the third file, Sample.txt, is filled (the Null checkbox indicator) because only select changes from that file will be included in the commit.
The change to Sample.txt that will be included is checked in the lower-right change selection portion of the image. The change that will be excluded is unchecked and the diff view is grayed out. Also notice that the icon for the shelve tool is still readily available.
MQ as Chad mentioned are one way. There's also more lightweight solutions:
Record extension which works roughly the same way as darcs record. It's distributed with mercurial.
Shelve extension which allows you to "shelve" certain changes, allowing you to commit only a subset of your changes (the ones that are not shelved)
I feel like I'm missing something because nobody has suggested this already.
The normal "hg commit" command can be used to selectively choose what to commit (you don't have to commit all pending changes in the local working directory).
If you have a set of changes like so:
M ext-web/docroot/WEB-INF/liferay-display.xml
M ext-web/docroot/WEB-INF/liferay-portlet-ext.xml
M ext-web/docroot/WEB-INF/portlet-ext.xml
You can commit just two of those changes with...
hg commit -m "partial commit of working dir changes" ext-web/docroot/WEB-INF/liferay-display.xml ext-web/docroot/WEB-INF/liferay-portlet-ext.xml
Not super convenient from the command line because you have to hand-type the files to selectively commit (vs a GUI check-box process like tortoise) but it's about as straightforward as it gets and requires no extensions. And file-globbing can probably help reduce typing (as it would above, both committed files uniquely share "liferay" in their pathnames.
The Mercurial Queues tutorial is terrible for this use case. All the examples I have seen assume you have yet to make a commit and you are refreshing a single patch. Most of the time this is not the case, and you have 2 or 3 commits that you want to squash together or change in some other way.
Lets say you have this sort of history:
---O---O---A---B---C
The first example is to squash commits A, B, and C. First init mq:
$ hg qinit
Now we need to "import" the commits A, B and C into the patch queue. Lets assume they are the last 3 commits. We can use the "-N" revision syntax to import them like so:
$ hg qimport -r -3:-1
That means import as patches from 3 patches back up to the last commit. You can check the status of these patches with hg qseries. It should show something like this:
$ hg qseries
101.diff
102.diff
103.diff
Where the numbers 101, 102 and 103 correspond to the local revision numbers of the commits A, B and C. Now these patches are applied, which means the changes that they describe are already in the working copy. You can get rid of the changes the working copy and remove them from the history of commits, saving them in patch form only, by using hg qpop. You can either say hg qpop; hg qpop to pop changes C and B off the stack, or specify a patch to "pop to". In this case, it would be something like this:
$ hg qpop 101.diff
now at: 101.diff
You now have the patches for commits B and C in the patch queue, but they are not applied (their changes have been "lost" - they only exist in the patch queue area). Now you can fold these patches into the last one, i.e. we create a new commit that is the equivalent of the sum of the changes A+B+C.
$ hg qfold -e 102.diff 103.diff
This will show your editor so you can change the commit message. By default the message will be the concatenation of the commit messages for the changes A, B and C, separated by asterisks. The nice thing here is that hg qfold will tab-complete the patches if you are using bash and have the hg-completion script sourced. This leaves the history like this, where A+B+C is a single commit that is the combination of the 3 patches that interest us:
---O---O---A+B+C
Another use case is if we have the same sort of history as before, but we want to drop patch B and merge A+C. This is pretty similar to above actually. When you get to the qfold step, you would simply fold in the last commit rather than the last 2 commits:
$ hg qfold -e 103.diff
This leaves the change for B in the patch queue, but it is not applied to the working copy and its commit is not in the history. You can see this by running:
$ hg qunapplied
102.diff
The history now looks like this, where A+C is a single commit that combines changes A and C:
---O---O---A+C
A final use case might be that you need to apply only commit C. You'd do this by running the qimport as above, and you would pop off all patches you didn't want:
$ hg qpop -a
The -a flag means pop off all patches. Now you can apply just the one you do want:
$ hg qpush 103.diff
This leaves you with this history:
---O---O---C
Once you are done with all this, you need to finish off the queue fiddling. This can be done with:
$ hg qfinish -a
So there we are. You can now run hg push and only commit exactly what you want, or hg email a coherent patch to the mailing list.
Some time has passed. Seems the best option now is hg commit --interactive
You can use the record extension, which is distributed with Mercurial.
You need to enable it in your ~/.hgrc file first, by adding it to the [extensions] section:
[extensions]
record=
Then, just type hg record instead of hg commit, and you will be able to select which changes to which files you want to commit.
You can also use the crecord extension which provides a nicer interface to review and select the changes. (It is not distributed with Mercurial, though, and I've seen it occasionally mess up a commit so it's not completely bug-free.)
I believe Mercurial Queues fills this role for Mercurial. There's a pretty good tutorial linked there.
Try qct (Qt Commit Tool). It has a "select changes" feature that starts up a 3-way merge tool for you to undo individual changes. After you commit, those changes you "undid" come back.
I use commit-patch. It's a script that lets you edit the diff before committing. It's really nice with Emacs's diff-mode and vc-mode.
In the past I used crecord, but it has bugs related to unicode (actually the record extension has the bugs, which crecord depends on).
First you must forget everything you ever knew about GUI's and return to the commandline. Next from the commandline do this:
hg stat > filelist.txt
This pipes all your modified files into a text file called filelist.txt
Next edit your filelist to include only the files you wish to commit.
Finally commit using the fileset sytnax:
hg commit "set: 'listfile:test.txt'"