Find deleted files in Mercurial repository history, quickly? - version-control

Question

You can use hg grep, but it searches the contents of all files.
What if I just want to search the file names of deleted files to recover one?
I tried hg grep -I <file-name-pattern> <pattern> but this seems to return no results.

Answer 1

using templates is simple:
$ hg log --template "{rev}: {file_dels}\n"

Answer 2

Update for Mercurial 1.6
You can use revsets for this too:
hg log -r "removes('**')"
(Edit: Note the double * - a single one detects removals from the root of the repository only.)
Edit: As Mathieu Longtin suggests, this can be combined with the template from dfa's answer to show you which files each listed revision removes:
hg log -r "removes('**')" --template "{rev}: {file_dels}\n"
That has the virtue (for machine-readability) of listing one revision per line, but you can make the output prettier for humans by using % to format each item in the list of deletions:
hg log -r "removes('**')" --template "{rev}:\n{file_dels % '{file}\n'}\n"

Answer 3

If you are using TortoiseHg workbench, a convenient way is to use the revision filter. Just hit ctrl+s, and then type
removes("**/FileYouWantToFind.txt")
**/ indicates that you want to search recursively in your repository.
You can use * wildcard in the filename too. You can combine this query with other revision sets using and, or operators.
There is also this Advanced Query Editor:

Answer 4

I have taken other answers and improved it.
Added "--no-merges". On large project with dev teams, there will lots of merges. --no-merger will filter out the log noise.
Change removes("**") to sort(removes("**"), -rev). For a large project with over 100K changesets, this will get to the latest files removed a lot faster. This reverses the order from starting at rev 0 to start at tip instead.
Added {author} and {desc} to ouput. This will give context as to why the files was removed by displaying the log comment and who did it.
So for my use case, it was hg log --template "File(s) deleted in rev {rev}: {author} \n {desc}\n {file_dels % '\n {file}'}\n\n" -r 'sort(removes("**"), -rev)' --no-merges
Sample output:
File(s) deleted in rev 52363: Ansariel
STORM-2141: Fix various inventory floater related issues:
* Opening new inventory via Control-Shift-I shortcut uses legacy and potentinally dangerous code path
* Closing new inventory windows don't release memory
* During shutdown legacy and inoperable code for inventory window cleanup is called
* Remove old and unused inventory legacy code
indra/newview/llfloaterinventory.cpp
indra/newview/llfloaterinventory.h
File(s) deleted in rev 51951: Ansariel
Remove readme.md file - again...
README.md
File(s) deleted in rev 51856: Brad Payne (Vir Linden) <vir#lindenlab.com>
SL-276 WIP - removed avatar_skeleton_spine_joints.xml
indra/newview/character/avatar_skeleton_spine_joints.xml
File(s) deleted in rev 51821: Brad Payne (Vir Linden) <vir#lindenlab.com>
SL-276 WIP - removed avatar_XXX_orig.xml files.
indra/newview/character/avatar_lad_orig.xml
indra/newview/character/avatar_skeleton_orig.xml

Answer 5

Search for a specific file you deleted efficiently, and format the result nicely:
hg log --template "File(s) deleted in rev {rev}: {file_dels % '\n {file}'}\n\n" -r 'removes("**/FileYouWantToFind.txt")'
Sample output:
File(s) deleted in rev 33336:
class/WebEngineX/Database/RawSql.php
File(s) deleted in rev 34468:
class/PdoPlus/AccessDeniedException.php
class/PdoPlus/BulkInsert.php
class/PdoPlus/BulkInsertInfo.php
class/PdoPlus/CannotAddForeignKeyException.php
class/PdoPlus/DuplicateEntryException.php
class/PdoPlus/Escaper.php
class/PdoPlus/MsPdo.php
class/PdoPlus/MyPdo.php
class/PdoPlus/MyPdoException.php
class/PdoPlus/NoSuchTableException.php
class/PdoPlus/PdoPlus.php
class/PdoPlus/PdoPlusException.php
class/PdoPlus/PdoPlusStatement.php
class/PdoPlus/RawSql.php

Answer 6

from project root
hg status . | grep "\!" >> /tmp/filesmissinginrepo.txt