Mercurial (hg) equivalent of git reset (--mixed or --soft) - mercurial

what would be an equivalent mercurial command (or workflow) for
git reset --mixed HEAD^
or
git reset --soft HEAD^
i.e. I want leave the working tree intact but get the repository back into the state it was before the last commit. Surprisingly I did not find anything useful on stackoverflow or with google.
Note that I cannot use
hg rollback
as I've done some history rewriting using HistEdit after the last commit.
Added to clarify:
After some rebasing and history editing I had ended up with A<--B<--C. Then I used HistEdit to squash B and C together, obtaining A<--C'. Now I want to split up the commit C' (I committed the wrong files in B). I figured the easiest way to do this was to get the repository back to state A (which technically never existed in the repository because of all the rebasing and history editing before hand) and the working tree to the state of C' and then doing two commits.

The right way to replicate git reset --soft HEAD^ (undo the current commit but keep changes in the working copy) is:
hg strip --keep -r .
-1 will only work if the commit you want to strip is the very last commit that entered the repository. . refers to the currently checked out commit, which is the closest equivalent Mercurial has to Git's HEAD.
Note that if . has descendants, those will get stripped away too. If you'd like to keep the commit around, then once you have the commit ID, you can instead:
hg update .^
hg revert --all -r <commit id>
This will update to the commit's parent and then replace the files in the working copy with the versions at that commit.

I believe the more modern and simpler way to do this now is hg uncommit. Note this leaves behind an empty commit which can be useful if you want to reuse the commit message later. If you don't, use hg uncommit --no-keep to not leave the empty commit.
hg uncommit [OPTION]... [FILE]...
uncommit part or all of a local changeset
This command undoes the effect of a local commit, returning the affected
files to their uncommitted state. This means that files modified or
deleted in the changeset will be left unchanged, and so will remain
modified in the working directory.
If no files are specified, the commit will be left empty, unless --no-keep

Related

Edit Mercurial Earlier Commit Message - TortoiseHg

Is there a way to edit a commit message in Mercurial on a commit after other commits have occured using TortoiseHg? I've read these posts:
How to edit incorrect commit message in Mercurial?
Mercurial: how to amend the last commit?
and have been able to update a "regular" commit message when it is the latest commit on a branch (using TortoiseHg). However, I haven't been able to figure out how to edit a commit message when other commits have occurred after the one I want to edit. It always edits the last commit.
Based on Ed Cottrell's comment, I did a test where I made two commits without pushing to the central repo, and I still have the same issue - only the last commit message can be edited.
EDIT: I should clarify that I am looking to update a changeset that has been pushed.
Histedit extension (bundled with TortoiseHG now) has a mess command for changing the commit message of historical changesets.
Unfortunately, this command is not supported by the TortoiseHG GUI so you need to run the command from command line.
As long as the change in question is local and hasn't been pushed anywhere, it is possible.
The commit message is used to compute the globally unique hash id that is used for all repositories to determine whether or not they already have a changeset. If you change the commit message, you change the unique hash id and every repo will see it as a "new" changeset. All other repositories that had the old changeset will try to get the new one and ask that you merge it with itself.... This is not a good thing, so the short answer to your question is "don't do it".
If you could definitively purge that change from all other repos, so that only the local copy is left you could essentially get to the "draft" state. Note that if any repo has the "old" changeset, it will be pushed to the central repo someday and cause the mess that we are trying to avoid.
If the changeset is still local (e.g. in draft status), you can use hg commit --amend if it is the parent of the working directory.
If there are changes after it, I would use mq and hg qimport all the changes down to and including the one where you want to edit the commit message. hg qpop -a and then hg qpush to get to the patch that represents the changeset you want to edit. Then hg qrefresh -e and make your changes. Then just hg qfin -a and you should be good to go.
The advice from Edward is good — if you've pushed your changes to another repository, you should consider them set in stone and not update the commit message or any other aspect of them.
However, we're working on changing this in Mercurial. There is an experimental extension that will allow you to do more extensive history editing and push those edits to other repositories. It is called the Evolve Extension and it enables some behavior that is partly in the core of Mercurial and partly outside core.
When using evolve, you can edit the second-to-last commit message like this
$ hg update .^
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
$ hg commit --amend -m 'new commit message'
1 new unstable changesets
$ hg stabilize
more:[5] old tip changeset
atop:[6] new commit message
The extension allows you to do this as long as the changesets are in the draft phase. To keep them in the draft phase after pushing them somewhere, the repository you push to need to be configured as a non-publishing repository. You can read more about this in the Changeset Evolution Documentation.

TortoiseHG : Removing commit

I've accidentally committed bunch of files locally, but didn't pushed.
So basically what I want to do is to remove this my commit, then push some other changes.
I can remove the commit by Backout-ing, then I've to commit locally so it is actually removed locally.
So my question is following, if I do a push, will my accidental commit and its corresponding revertion log be visible publically ?
It sounds like hg rollback is the command you want.
hg backout <REV> creates a new commit that reverses the changes made in <REV>. Both the original commit and the backout commit will remain in your history. This is one of the few options you have to fix a bad commit after you have pushed it to a public location.
However in this case you have not pushed to the public yet, so there are better solutions.
If the bad commit is the last commit that was done (i.e. your tip) then you can use hg rollback (under the Repository menu in TortoiseHg). This command is like "undo" for commits.
If the bad commit is elsewhere in your history (but still has not been pushed to a public repo), you can also use the mq extension to rewrite that part of your history.
You could use hg strip -r . --keep instead of hg rollback. hg backout would be necessary only if you had pushed your commits.
The simple answer to your question is Yes.
If you perform a Backout, then it will show up in your history.
You want to perform a Strip, as previously suggested.
This is an extension to mercurial.
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/StripExtension

How do you delete a commit in Mercurial?

I want to completely delete a Mercurial commit as if it was never entered in the repository and move back to my prior commit.
Is this possible?
If it was your last commit and you haven't pushed it anywhere, you can do that with rollback. Otherwise, no. Not really. Time to change your passwords.
Edit: It has been pointed out that you can clone from an older revision and merge in the changes you want to keep. That's also true, unless you have pushed it to a repo you don't control. Once you push, your data is very likely to be very hard to get back.
You can try to remove mq info about your commit.
For this you need to go File->Settings->Extensions.
There check mq and restart gui.
After that just right click on unneeded commit and
ModifyHistory->Strip
To edit the history I would use the Histedit Extension extension.
hg histedit 45:c3a3a271d11c
However keep in mind this only makes sense in a situation where you have not yet pushed the commits to the public repository, you own the public repository and/or you can account for all the clones out there. If you receive the following error:
abort: can't rebase immutable changeset 43ab8134e7af
It means that Mecurial thinks this is a public changeset (see phases) that has already been pushed - you can force it to be a draft again doing:
hg phase -f -d 45:c3a3a271d11c
I encounter this fairly often. I make a commit and then pull to push. But then there is something incoming that makes my newly made commit unnecessary. A plain hg rollback isn't enough because it only undoes the pull...
This is the thing to do:
hg strip <rev>
Things are painless when you don't push your changesets anywhere.
If it's more than one commit and/or you already pushed it somewhere else, you can clone your repository and specify the last changeset that should be cloned.
See my answer here how to do this:
Mercurial: Fix a borked history
If you only committed locally and didn't push, you can just create a clone locally (as described in my link) and you're done.
If you already pushed to some remote repository, you would have to replace that with your clone.
Of course it depends if you are able (or allowed) to do this.
You can use "hg backout" to do a reverse merge basically. All options are discussed in the freely available book "Mercurial: The Definitive Guide":
http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/finding-and-fixing-mistakes.html
If using tortoise you can use modify history > strip...
Yes. Unless I am mistaken, as of v2.3 (rel. 2012/08/01) you can use the HisteditExtension with a drop command to drop a commit, along with strip or backout to remove changes.
A simple Google search on the feature: https://www.google.com/webhp#q=histedit+drop
In 2022 I do use evolve extension. It is one of the best extensions for this purpose.
To prune unwanted changeset, if you for example did a quick hack to get the code working:
$ echo 'debug hack' >> file1.c
$ hg commit -m 'debug hack'
Now you have a proper patch you can do hg prune .:
$ hg prune .
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
working directory is now at 2a39221aaebb
1 changesets pruned
If you push the change to the remote repository you will find only obsolescence markers:
$ hg push
searching for changes
no changes found
remote: 1 new obsolescence markers
To check the changes to your local repo you can pull from the remote one:
$ hg pull
pulling from ssh://userid#server/repo
searching for changes
no changes found

How to revert a Mercurial hg pull?

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.

Using Mercurial, if you commit, can you get back to the original state before you commit?

hg backout tip seem to also revert all your files back to the older version. Is there a way to change it back to EXACTLY like before the commit -- that is, with several files "Modified" but uncommitted -- essentially, as if the "commit" was never done?
(hg rollback is said to be very bad and usually shouldn't be done for version control purpose)
hg rollback does exactly what you are asking for - it undoes the hg commit and you end up in the state you were before you committed.
Of course it's not really in the intention of a version control system to "lose" versions you already committed, but it's handy to revert an accidental commit.
Once you push, of course, there is no tool that will do what you want. That being said, if you have more than one changelist that you want to remove from your local history rather than just undoing their effect with hg backout, then you can use hg strip, which is available as part of the MQ extension package.
You can do the following to get your desired effect:
hg export tip > foo.patch
hg strip tip
hg import --no-commit foo.patch