Mercurial Merge Take Local/Ignore Remote Completely - mercurial

I was wondering if this is possible.
Let's say I have the following changesets
Changeset 5: Did Something to file c.txt
Changeset 4: Added some change to File b.txt
Changeset 3: Added some change to File a.txt
Changeset 2: Did Something to file c.txt
Changeset 1: Did Something to file c.txt
I realized that from changeset 3 to 5, I messedup and I want to go back to changeset 2 [Easily done with an update].
Now I work off of Changeset 2 and I make changeset 6, which has the parent of changeset2.
If I merge Changeset 2 into Changeset 5, The changes to file b.txt and file a.txt will show up in the merged heads. Is there a way to just make changeset 6 my new head?
A couple of constraints. I don't want to start a new branch, and I cannot strip the changes since they are already pushed to the server.

backout 3 and 4 in changeset 7
merge 6 and 7

Related

Retroactively use Mercurial rename

In my project, I haven't been using hg remove, hg mv or hg addremove due to ignorance. Consequently, every time I've renamed or moved a file, the history of that file has been messed up and now when I look at an individual file's history, I will only see a portion of the history.
What I'm looking for is a way to go back and retroactively fix all of those renaming mistakes so that the file history will stay together. What I imagine would be most likely is a way to edit the data in ".hg\store\data" to make this work. I've been experimenting, and I see the lines copy: and copyrev: in the data for the files I've renamed, so I suspect that has something to do with it.
Assume that I have control of the central repository and that there are no clones of it currently.
Summary:
Since you have full control of the repo this can be 100% fixed using normal hg commands.
The principle idea is to insert new changesets in the right places which effectively correct the original ones.
Let's say your history looks like this:
A-B-C-*
(* is your working folder)
and it was in B that you renamed a file in the filesystem without renaming it in hg.
Do this:
hg up A
hg revert -r B --all
hg mv oldfilename newfilename
hg commit -m <message>
The key here is using revert which is used to copy changes from a changeset into your working folder. This only works this way because you have updated to the predecessor of the changeset you are reverting.
at this point your history looks like:
A-B-C
\
B'-*
where B' is the "corrected" variant of B. Continue with:
hg rebase -s C -d B'
and you have:
A-B
\
B'-C-*
You can now clean up by doing:
hg strip B
leaving just:
A-B'-C-*
Of course where I used revisions like B you need to type the actual revision # or hash.
You could also use TortoiseHG or some other GUI to do a lot of these steps.
This answer covers the situation where you do NOT have full control of the repo. Its a little trickier and you can't get quite as clean of a result, but it still can be dealt with using normal hg commands.
The principle idea is to insert new changesets in the right places which effectively correct the original ones, and merge them after the fact.
Let's say your history looks like this:
A-B-C-*
(* is your working folder)
and it was in B that you renamed a file in the filesystem without renaming it in hg.
Do this:
hg up A
hg mv oldfilename newfilename
hg commit -m <message>
at this point your history looks like:
A-B-C
\
B'-*
where B' is the "corrected" variant of B. Continue with:
hg up C
hg merge B'
hg commit
and you have:
A-B-C-D-*
\ /
B'
If you look at the file history of the file in question, it will look something like this:
o D merge
|\
| o B' rename file
| |
o | B change where the file should have been renamed
|
o A some earlier change
/
o ...
|
o ...
So the history is all linked together for the file. Its just a little weird that B looks like it started from nowhere (because it actually did).

What's the best way to back out multiple changesets in mercurial?

Is the most reliable method to go one-by-one, using the backout command for each of many changesets, or is there a way to create one big reversal changeset to cover a whole bunch of [edit: non-contiguous] changesets.
If one-by-one, does order matter? (Should one go last-to-first?)
Does the best method differ if there are merges among different sub-projects along the way?
Does this tend to go smoothly in your experience? :-)
If you have no merges along the way, you can either back out every individual change (in reverse order), or, if there are many of them, do it with one big inverse patch.
If you have good changesets atop the ones you need to back out, better commit the inverse patch on top of the most recent bad changeset, then rebasing them onto the tip of the branch.
1 -- 2 -- A -- B -- C -- 3 -- 4
\
C'B'A'
$ hg up C
$ hg diff -r C:2 > backout.diff
$ hg import --no-commit backout.diff
$ hg ci -m "Backout A, B, C"
$ hg up 4
$ hg rebase -s C'B'A -d .
There will be problems if you want to back out merge changesets, see this wiki page for more information.
In such a case, if possible, consider re-doing the branch and stripping the old lineage. Otherwise, you might have to abandon the branch altogether, salvaging the good changesets via graft or transplant.
There is --collapse option for rebase.
Helgi's answer can be upgraded into:
1 -- A -- 2 -- B -- 3 -- C -- 4 -- 5
\
C' -- B' -- A'
$ hg update --clean C
$ hg backout --rev C --message "Backed out changeset: C"
$ hg backout --rev B
$ hg commit --message "Backed out changeset: B"
$ hg backout --rev A
$ hg commit --message "Backed out changeset: A"
$ hg rebase --collapse --source C' --dest 5
$ hg commit --message "Backed out C, B, A"
which will result in the following
1 -- A -- 2 -- B -- 3 -- C -- 4 -- 5 -- C'B'A'
However, backing out in separate branch may result in [logical] conflict in the subsequent merge.
1 -- A -- 2 -- B -- 3 -- X -- 4
\ \
B' -- A' -- M
if X depends on A or B, then M will have conflict (at least logical conflict).
What I came up with is inelegant, but got the job done, despite that the changes I needed to back out were interspersed with other work and had some internal branching. Here's what I did. (Comments and improvements are welcome.)
Got a list of all of the changesets (which I then used to generate the commands below):
hg log -r 'keyword(xyz)' --template '{rev}\n'
Generated a patch for each changeset:
hg diff -p -U 8 --reverse -c 15094 > 15094.rev.patch
hg diff -p -U 8 --reverse -c 15095 > 15095.rev.patch
...
Then, applied each reverse patch. Here the order matters, last-to-first:
hg import -m "reversing changeset 15302" 15302.rev.patch
hg import -m "reversing changeset 15292" 15292.rev.patch
...
This process was interrupted several times for merges that didn't go through automatically, where I had to manually apply changes to a file from its .rej file and then manually commit, before picking up the imports where it had left off.
Finally (in another clone... did I mention I did this all in a clone?) I compressed the whole set of reverse changesets into one changeset using hg histedit -o and its fold command.
Now I've got a single changeset that I should be able to reverse and apply if I decide to put the work back in at a later date (Although if I cross that bridge, I might apply the "forward" patches piecemeal again in order to get better blame/annotate information)
This is how you can do it with TortoiseHg.
Of course you can do the same with the command line.
Given this history, where you wan't to get rid of changeset A, B and C:
1 -- 2 -- A -- B -- C -- 3 -- 4
First update to revision 2.
Then rebase the first of any later revisions you wan't to keep - in this case revision 3.
Your history now looks like this:
1 -- 2 -- A -- B -- C
\
3 -- 4
Now update to revison 4.
And finally use "Merge with local" to merge revision C onto revision 4.
At this point it is crucial that you select the option "Discard all changes from merge target (other) revision".
The description may not be the most logical, but it means that you merge the old tip C back to the default branch - but without the changesets A, B and C.
The result is:
1 -- 2 -- A -- B -- C --
\ /
3 -- 4
Commit and you're done.
If you don't want the "backout" changesets in your history, you could also do something else:
Make a clone of your repository, but only up to the last changeset that you don't want to get rid of.
See Mercurial: Fix a borked history for an example how to do this.
If your repository was a local one, that's all you have to do.
But if the bad changesets were already pushed to a central repository, you'd need server access to delete the repository there and replace it by your clone.
Plus, if someone else already pulled from the repo with the bad changesets, they need to delete and re-clone (otherwise the bad changesets are in the central repo again as soon as one of the other people pushes again).
So it depends on the circumstances whether this solution is a good one for you...

How to show list of unapplied changesets in Mercurial

After pushing changesets to a repository called 'A' how can I see the list of changesets waiting to be applied when I am in 'A'?
Expanding on that,
In repo B I push changesets to repo B
I change to repo B
How can I list the changesets pushed in step 1?
Not sure what you mean by "unapplied" changesets, however here's a couple thoughts.
You can easily see what changesets will be pushed to a repository by doing hg outgoing prior to doing the hg push. This will list all of the changesets that will be pushed using default options.
Similarly you can use hg incoming in the destination repository to show what changesets would be pulled from another repo.
As for "unapplied" changesets, if I assume you mean changesets that are newer than the working directory, you could use hg log -r .:tip, which should (I've not had a chance to test it) show all newer revisions, but not actually all recently-pushed ones.
Edit: I've updated the revision set in the -r option to something that should work. Have a look at revsets on the Mercurial manpage for more possibilities.
$ hg summary
parent: 0:9f47fcf4811f
.
branch: default
commit: (clean)
update: 2 new changesets (update) <<<<<
The update bit tells you what (I think) you want.
I had written a different answer, but I ended up with a better way of doing what is needed here (an even better and definitive –for me– solution is at the end of this post, in the [EDIT] section).
Use hg log.
Specifically, issue an hg sum command first. This will give me:
parent: 189:77e9fd7e4554
<some commit message>
branch: default
commit: (clean)
update: 2 new changesets (update)
To see what those 2 new changesets are made of, I use
hg log -r tip -r 2 -v
Obviously, 2 is to be replaced with the number of changesets that hg sum reports.
This works because tip will refer to the most recent (or "unapplied") changeset. By limiting the output to the 2 latest changes (-l 2), the information is shown only for those changesets that I'm interested in. With -v, the list of files affected by the changeset is also shown.
To make things simpler, I have defined a user command in my .bashrc file:
alias hglog="hg log -r tip -l $1"
This allows me to type hg sum (to get the number of pending/unapplied changesets) and then to type hglog x where x is the number of changesets revealed by hg sum.
There is probably a more complete way of doing this, for instance using custom templates, but I guess it's pushing things too far in terms of sophistication.
[EDIT] (Third iteration)
I have reached the most satisfying answer to this question by expanding on the alias idea so that I no longer have to type hg sum. My .bashrc file now contains this:
show_pending_changesets() {
nb=$(hg sum | grep "update:" | sed 's/update: \([0-9]*\) .*/\1/');
if [ `expr $nb + 1 2> /dev/null` ] ; then
hg log -r tip -v -l $nb
else
echo "Nothing new to report"
fi ;
}
...
alias hgwhatsnew=show_pending_changesets
Explanation: I'm using sed to extract the number of changesets from the last line (which is the one that starts with update:) of the output of hg sum. That number is then fed to hg log. All I have to do then is to type hgw and tab-complete it. HTH

Does merge direction matter in Mercurial?

Take a simple example: I'm working on the default branch, have some changesets committed locally, and I pulled a few more from the master repository. I've been working for a few days in my isolated local repository, so there's quite a few changes to merge before I can push my results back into master.
default ---o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o (pulled stuff)
\
o----o------------o (my stuff)
I can do two things now.
Option #1:
hg pull
hg merge
Result #1:
default ---o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
\ \
o----o------------o-O
Option #2:
hg pull
hg update
hg merge
Result #2:
default ---o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-O
\ /
o----o------------o
These two results look isomorphic to me, but in practice it seems that option #2 results in way smaller changesets (because it only applies my few changes to the mainline instead of applying all the mainline changes to my few).
My question is: does this matter? Should I care about the direction of my merges? Am I saving space if I do this? (Doing hg log --patch --rev tip after the merge suggests so.)
They're (effectively) identical. You see a difference in the hg log --patch --rev X output size because log shows the diff of the result and (arbitrarily) its 'left' parent (officially p1), but that's not how it's stored (Mercurial has a binary diff storage format that isn't patch/diff based) and it's now how it's computed (p1, p2, and most-recent-common-ancestor are all used).
The only real difference is, if you're using named branches, the branch name will be that of the left parent.
There is also a difference if you are using Bookmarks. When doing a merge, the branch that you are is the branch that is receiving the changes, so the new changeset will be part of that branch. Supose you have this situation:
default ---o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o -- Head: Rev 200
\
o----o------------o -- Head: Rev 195, Bookmark: my-stuff
If you merge Rev 200 into Rev 195, the bookmark my-stuff will move on to Rev 201, as you are generating a new changeset in the same branch that has the bookmark.
On the other hand, if you merge 195 into 200, you are generating a changeset in the branch that don't have the bookmark. The my-stuff bookmark will remain in Rev 195.

Mercurial: how can I see only the changes introduced by a merge?

I'm trying to get in the habit of doing code reviews, but merges have been making the process difficult because I don't know how to ask Mercurial to "show only changes introduced by the merge which were not present in either of its parents."
Or, slightly more formally (thanks to Steve Losh):
Show me every hunk in the merge that wasn't present in either of its parents, and show me every hunk present in either of its parents that isn't also present in 3.
For example, assume I have a repository with two files, a and b. If "a" is changed in revision 1, "b" is changed in revision 2 (which is on a separate branch) and these two changes are merged in revision 3, I'll get a history which looks like this:
# changeset: 3
|\ summary: Merged.
| |
| o changeset: 2
| | summary: Changing b
| |
o | changeset: 1
|/ summary: Changing a
|
o changeset: 0
summary: Adding a and b
But if I ask to see the changes introduced by revision 3, hg di -c 3, Mercurial will show me the same thing as if I asked to see the changes introduced in revision 1, hg di -c 1:
$ hg di -c 3
--- a/a
+++ b/a
## -1,1 +1,1 ##
-a
+Change to a
$ hg di -c 1
--- a/a
+++ b/a
## -1,1 +1,1 ##
-a
+Change to a
But, obviously, this isn't very helpful - instead, I would like to be told that no new changes were introduced by revision 3 (or, if there was a conflict during the merge, I would like to see only the resolution to that conflict). Something like:
$ hg di -c 3
$
So, how can I do this?
ps: I know that I can reduce the number of merges in my repository using rebase… But that's not my problem - my problem is figuring out what was changed with a merge.
The short answer: you can't do this with any stock Mercurial command.
Running hg diff -c 3 will show you the changes between 3 and its first parent -- i.e. the changeset you were at when you ran hg merge.
This makes sense when you think of branches as more than just simple changesets. When you run hg up 1 && hg merge 2 you're telling Mercurial: "Merge changeset 2 into changeset 1".
It's more obvious if you're using named branches. Say changeset 2 in your example was on a named branch called rewrite-ui. When you run hg update 1 && hg merge rewrite-ui you're effectively saying: "Merge all the changes in the rewrite-ui branch into the current branch." When you later run hg diff -c on this changeset it's showing you everything that was introduced to the default branch (or whatever branch 1 happens to be on) by the merge, which makes sense.
From your question, though, it looks like you're looking for a way to say:
Show me every hunk in this changeset that wasn't present in either of its parents, and show me every hunk present in either of its parents that isn't also present in 3.
This isn't a simple thing to calculate (I'm not even sure I got the description right just now). I can definitely see how it would be useful, though, so if you can define it unambiguously you might convince one of us Mercurial contributors that read SO to implement it.
In order to do code reviews you really want to see just the changes in the project that you are reviewing. To that end we use a new branch for each story and use pull requests to spotlight the changes, having merged all changes into the story branch before creating the pull request. We host our code on bitbucket and the review / pull request tools are really very good, offering a side by side diff.
Pull requests with side-by-side diffs