Mercurial: Multiple Change sets at once? - mercurial

Question

Before, when I was using perforce, I could work on multiple bugs at once as long as the code did not affect the same files, by having multiple change sets open at once.
Changeset 1:
A.txt
B.txt
C.txt
Changeset 2:
D.txt
E.txt
F.txt
I could submit changeset 2 to the repository without submitting changeset 1 (because it's still in progress)
Is this possible with Mercurial? other than doing each file as a separate commit?

Answer 1

You can always just do: hg commit D.txt E.txt F.txt to commit just those files which will leave A.txt, B.txt, and C.txt uncommited. Using the -I option to commit lets you do those with patterns if they're, for example, in a common directory: hg commit -I 'dir1/**'

Answer 2

You can have two separate branches (working copies) and make one change in and the other in the other. That's one way.
Another is to use Mercurial Queues. You can use qpush --move to change the order of changesets if they have no dependencies on one another, so you can then use qfinish to 'commit' the first changeset that's ready.

Answer 3

You don't actually hold changesets "open" in Mercurial.
Either you've committed your changes, or you haven't.
You can, however, have multiple files with uncommitted changes, and only commit a few of them. It is even possible to commit parts of files, chunks, instead of the whole file.
If I was to do what you're asking I would simply make another clone locally from my first one, and work on the two different fixes in two different working folders. Then I have all the freedom I need to combine the two (push/pull locally), push to the server, etc.

Answer 4

In Mercurial, cloning is a cheap operation when done locally. Just clone the repository for each thing you are working on. Push back to the main repository as each thing is ready:
hg clone http://project project
hg clone project project-bugfix // uses hardlinks and is inexpensive.
hg clone project project-feature
<edit bugfix and feature as needed>
But remember that the default push location is the project cloned from, so you'll either need to edit .hg\hgrc's default push path for the "project" clones, or make sure to hg push http://project from "project-bugfix" and "project-feature" when complete.

Answer 5

Even if your modifications touches the same file you can select what to include (hunk by hunk). You just have to activate the record extension (it's installed by not activated by default).
To activate the record extension, put this in the [extensions] section of your .hgrc:
[extensions]
hgext.record=
Then to commit, replace hg commit by hg record. Let's assume your example change sets with a G.txt file that have changes for both change sets. Commit with:
hg record D.txt E.txt F.txt G.txt
Answer questions, for example:
2 hunks, 6 lines changed
examine changes to 'D.txt'? [Ynsfdaq?] f # f for full file (help with ?)
... skipped file E and F
6 hunks, 35 lines changed
examine changes to 'G.txt'? [Ynsfdaq?] y
## ... (patch hunk here)
record change 6/16 to 'G.txt'? [Ynsfdaq?] y # y to include the hunk, n to skip