Let's say I have anonymous branches AA and BB.
In branch AA there is a changeset CC which I'd like to merge into BB, without bringing in all its parents.
Doing this would work:
hg diff -c CC >>CC.diff
patch -p1 <CC.diff
However, I'd lose the information that this the same changeset as CC, I'd just be creating a new one which happens to do the same thing.
Is there a more repository-friendly way to go?
You can cherrypick changesets using the hg transplant extension.
transplant is fine when you cannot do a full merge for some reason. However, it is not recommended to rely on it in your daily workflow due to its side effects.
EDIT: This functionality is a core feature (hg graft) in Mercurial since version 2.0.
Related
I am currently using Mercurial for sub-version control in my project. Now I am suppose to work on a new branch 2.7 but I confuse to work with branch 2.6, I have developed the new feature which the feature on 2.7 but I build on 2.6. And now I want to move this feature to branch 2.7 properly but I don't know how can I move it properly. Is there any way?
I would recommend using hg graft, which copies changes from one branch to another and unlike hg rebase is not destructive (relevant if you're doing this for the first time and may be making mistakes or if you need the feature to be present on both branches).
To copy changes to a branch dest-branch, do the following. First update to the branch you want to copy the changes to:
hg update dest-branch
Then, use graft to copy the revisions you want from the original branch, e.g.:
hg graft -r start..end
where start is the first revision you want to graft from the source branch and end is the last revision.
You may encounter conflicts if they can't be merged cleanly, which you have to resolve them (as you'd do in a merge), then use hg graft --continue to graft the remaining revisions.
The magic word is RTFM - hg help rebase
If I have a bunch of uncommitted changes and want to set it aside while working on something else instead, and then later (f.i. after several days) come back to it and proceed working. What would be the easiest workflow to accomplish this? (So far I have only experience with Mercurial's basic functionality). My usual method was to create a new branch using clone, but there might be better ways.
You have a handful options:
Shelve the items. This saves the changes and removes them from the working directory so the branch can continue. It doesn't create a change-set.
hg shelve --all --name "UnfinishedChanges"
hg unshelve --name "UnfinishedChanges"
Update/Edit: Newer versions of mercurial may need to use
hg shelve -n "UnfinishedChanges"
hg unshelve "UnfinishedChanges"
You can still use --name as an alternative to -n, but mercurial doesn't seem to like --name anymore. Additionally, the --all is no longer required and mercurial will in fact freak out over it.
Patch queue the items using mq. This isn't too dissimilar to shelve in some respects, but behaves differently. The end result is the same, changes are removed and can be optionally re-applied later. When pushed, the patches are logical change-sets, when popped they are saved elsewhere and are not part of change-set history.
hg qnew "UnfinishedWork"
hg qrefresh
hg qpop
hg qpush "UnfinishedWork"
Commit them locally, update to the previous change-set and continue working and make use of anonymous branches (or multiple heads). If you then want the changes, you can merge heads. If you don't want the changes, you can strip the change-set.
hg commit -m"Commiting unfinished work in-line."
hg update -r<previous revision>
hg strip -r<revision of temporary commit>
Commit them to a named branch. The workflow then becomes the same as option 3 - merge or strip when you are ready.
hg branch "NewBranch"
hg commit -m"Commiting unfinished work to temporary named branch."
hg update <previous branch name>
Personally I use option 3 or 4 as I don't mind stripping change-sets or checking-in partial code (so long as that doesn't eventually get pushed). This can be used in conjunction with the new Phase stuff to hide your local change-sets from other users if need-be.
I also use the rebase command to move change-sets around to avoid merges where a merge wouldn't add anything to the history of the code. Merges I tend to save for activity between important branches (such as release branches), or activity from a longer-lived feature branch. There is also the histedit command I use for compressing change-sets where the "chattiness" of them reduces the value.
Patch queues are also a common mechanism for doing this, but they have stack semantics. You push and pop patches, but a patch that is "underneath" another patch in the stack requires that the one on top of it be pushed also.
Warning, as with all these options, if the files have more changes since the temporary changes that you've shelved / queued / branched, there will be merge resolution required when un-shelving / pushing / merging.
Personally, I don't like any of the answers posted so far:
I don't like clone branching because I like each project to have only one directory. Working on different directories at the same time completly messes the history of recent files of my editors. I always end up changing the wrong file. So I don't do that anymore.
I use shelve for quick fixes (just to move my uncommited changes to another branch, if I realize I'm at the wrong one). You are talking about days, no way I'd shelve something for days.
I think mq is too complicated for such an ordinary sittuation
I think the best way is to simply commit your changes, than you go back to the changeset before you start these changes and work from there. There are some minor issues, let me illustrate:
Let's say you have the changeset A. Than you start your changes. At this point you want set it aside for a while. First of all, commit your work:
hg ci -m "Working on new stuff"
If you want, you can add a bookmark to make it easier to come back later. I always create bookmarks to my anonymous branches.
hg bookmark new-stuff
Go back to the changeset before these modifications
hg update A
From here, you work and generate the changeset C. Now you have 2 heads (B and C), you'll be warned when you try to push. You can push only one branch by specifying the head of that branch:
hg push -r C
Or you can change the phase of the new-stuff branch to secret. Secret changesets won't be pushed.
hg phase -r new-stuff --secret --force
To keep local uncommited changes, easiest way for me is just to save them as a patch file.
hg diff > /tmp/`hg id -i`.patch
and when you need to return to previous state:
hg up <REV_WHERE_SAVED>
hg patch --no-commit /tmp/<REV_WHERE_SAVED>.patch
You can just clone your repo multiple times. I tend to have a root clone, then multiple childs from there. Example:
MyProject.Root
MyProject.BugFix1
MyProject.BugFix2
MyProject.FeatureChange1
MyProject.FeatureChange2
The 4 childs are all cloned from the root and push/pull to/from the root. The root then push/pulls from the master repo on the network/internet somewhere. The root acts as your sort of personal staging area.
So in your case, you'd just clone up a new repo and start working. Leave your 'shelved' work alone in the other repo. It's that simple.
The only downside is disk space usage, but if that were a concern you'd not be using DVCS at all anyway ;) Oh and it does kind of pollute your Visual Studio "recent projects" list, but what the hey.
[Edit following comments] :-
To conclude then... what you're doing is completely fine and normal. I would argue it is the best possible way to work when the following are true: 1) it is short-lived 2) you don't need to collaborate with other developers 3) the changes don't need to leave your PC until commit/push time.
In my repo, I have the revisions 1 to 10. I've pushed up to 5 (so the next hg push would publish revisions 6-10).
But I have to interrupt my work now and the result isn't 100% complete. So I'd like to move the revisions 6-10 into a new "experimental" branch to allow someone else to complete the work without disrupting the sources for everyone.
How can I add a branch to a non-tip revision (in my case: Starting with revision 6)? Or should I use a completely different approach?
You cannot apply a branch name after the fact without modifying your history.
The most simple approach is to ask the other users to use revision 5 as the parent for any changes they create. For example, the other users would:
hg clone <your repo> or even hg clone --rev 5
hg update -r 5
work, work, work
hg commit
When they commit a change, it will create a second head on the default branch, but that should not create any problems. You will simply need to merge the two heads together once your experimental changes are complete.
That being said, moving your changesets onto a branch can be accomplished using Mercurial Queues (MQ). The following sequence shows how it be done:
hg qinit (Create a new patch queue)
hg qimport --rev 6:10 (import r6-10 into a new patch queue)
hg qpop -a (remove all patches from your working copy)
hg branch <branch name> (create your new experimental branch)
hg qpush -a (apply all the patches to your branch)
hg qfinish -a (convert all patches to permanent changesets)
Tim already has good suggestions. Additionally you could push your experimental changes into a distinct experimental clone on your central server (I guess you use one). This clone could also be used by other developers to push their not-yet-finished work in order to let others review or continue it. It is also clear that this clone's code is not ready to be used. Once some task is finished, the corresponding changesets can be pushed to the stable repository.
Actually named branches are a good idea for your case, but the fact that their names are burned into history mostly is more a problem than a feature. IMHO Git's branch names are more practically. However, to some extend you could also handle your case with bookmarks, which are pushable since Mercurial 1.7 (not sure here). That is you bookmark revision 5 with something like stable (or whatever you agree on in your team) and revision 10 gets bookmarked with something like Aarons-not-finished-work. The other developers would then just pull stable, except your colleague who is supposed to continue your work, who would pull the other bookmark. However, personally I did not use a such workflow yet, so I cannot say if it performs well in practice.
In my setup I have a central Hg repo to which I'm pushing my local changes. Say in my local clone I have a series of local commits and then I want to push the changes to the central repo. How can I push only the final state without including all of the "small" local commits that I made?
I want this because sometimes I dont want to pollute the central repo's history with all of the small local commits that I made.
Why would you want to do that? Committing small changes makes it easy to revert something. If you collect everything in one big commit, reverting a small change might not be as easy.
I agree with bjorn (and I'm upvoting his answer), what you're doing isn't a great idea -- meaningful history is a good thing. If you can't be talked out of it then what you're trying to do isn't just push the last changeset but a new changeset that is a combination of all those changesets. The easiest way to do that is to use the collapse extension, though mq or even export/import can do it. The key there is that in collapsing multiple changesets into one you're rewriting history and you're going to remove your existing changesets and replace them with that new combined changeset. Doing so violates the immutability of history that makes Mercurial so trust worthy.
How to do this without any extensions is explained in the mercurial wiki page ConcatenatingChangesets.
That page also links to a few alternative approaches with hg extensions, like the CollapseExtension.
It is possible to rewrite your history using the mq extension. Suppose the revisions you want to collapse are revs, 5,6,7 with 7 being the tip. You would accomplish this via:
# Import the revs you want to collapse into mq
# mq will create patches for each revision from 5:tip, with the name
# <local rev number>.diff
hg qimport -r5:tip
# Goto the first commit
hg qgoto 5.diff
# Fold in the other commits successively. Aside from shell magic, there is
# no command line way to specify multiple patches at once.
hg qfold 6.diff
hg qfold 7.diff
# Commit the new mq patch as a changeset of its own
hg qfinish 5.diff
Now, your repository contains only a rev 5 with the contents of what was previously revisions 5, 6, and 7.
I've encountered a problem in my Mercurial workflow when experimenting with implementing a certain feature. I was trying three different approaches to implementing the feature by commiting each update followed by updating to the previous changeset - so I end up with three different branches.
Once I have chosen one of the branches to be the "correct" implementation of the feature, I want to remove the other branches so that I don't have multiple heads. How do I do this in a simple way? I ended up merging the three branches together which was pointless because I only ever wanted the code from one branch.
In addition to hg strip from the mq extension, you can simply use the standard clone command:
$ hg clone -r the-good-head . ../pruned
to get a clone in ../pruned that holds only the good head (and all its ancestors). This is the safe, built-in way to prune things in Mercurial and it has the advantage that you still have both repositories intact after the command. So if you make a mistake, then just delete the ../pruned clone.
The following closes a branch
hg commit --close-branch
It will not show up in
hg branches or hg heads
Enable the built-in mq extension and run hg strip.
#pyfunc's answer keeps the closed branches in revision history, which is what I would actually do unless your unwanted branches are huge.