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Mercurial: how to amend the last commit?
(8 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I am currently using TortoiseHg (Mercurial) and accidentally committed an incorrect commit message. How do I go about editing this commit message in the repository?
Update: Mercurial has added --amend which should be the preferred option now.
You can rollback the last commit (but only the last one) with hg rollback and then reapply it.
Important: this permanently removes the latest commit (or pull). So if you've done a hg update that commit is no longer in your working directory then it's gone forever. So make a copy first.
Other than that, you cannot change the repository's history (including commit messages), because everything in there is check-summed. The only thing you could do is prune the history after a given changeset, and then recreate it accordingly.
None of this will work if you have already published your changes (unless you can get hold of all copies), and you also cannot "rewrite history" that include GPG-signed commits (by other people).
Well, I used to do this way:
Imagine, you have 500 commits, and your erroneous commit message is in r.498.
hg qimport -r 498:tip
hg qpop -a
joe .hg/patches/498.diff
(change the comment, after the mercurial header)
hg qpush -a
hg qdelete -r qbase:qtip
Good news: hg 2.2 just added git like --amend option.
and in tortoiseHg, you can use "Amend current revision" by select black arrow on the right of commit button
I know this is an old post and you marked the question as answered. I was looking for the same thing recently and I found the histedit extension very useful. The process is explained here:
http://knowledgestockpile.blogspot.com/2010/12/changing-commit-message-of-revision-in.html
Last operation was the commit in question
To change the commit message of the last commit when the last mercurial operation was a commit you can use
$ hg rollback
to roll back the last commit and re-commit it with the new message:
$ hg ci -m 'new message'
But be careful because the rollback command also rolls back following operations:
import
pull
push (with this repository as the destination)
unbundle
(see hg help rollback)
Thus, if you are not sure if the last mercurial command was a hg ci, don't use hg rollback.
Change any other commit message
You can use the mq extension, which is distributed with Mercurial, to change the commit message of any commit.
This approach is only useful when there aren't already cloned repositories in the public that contain the changeset you want to rename because doing so alters the changeset hash of it and all following changesets.
That means that you have to be able to remove all existing clones that include the changeset you want to rename, or else pushing/pulling between them wouldn't work.
To use the mq extension you have to explicitly enable it, e.g. under UNIX check your ~/.hgrc, which should contain following lines:
[extensions]
mq=
Say that you want to change revision X - first qimport imports revisions X and following. Now they are registered as a stack of applied patches. Popping (qpop) the complete stack except X makes X available for changes via qrefresh. After the commit message is changed you have to push all patches again (qpop) to re-apply them, i.e. to recreate the following revisions. The stack of patches isn't needed any, thus it can be removed via qfinish.
Following demo script shows all operations in action. In the example the commit message of third changeset is renamed.
# test.sh
cd $(dirname $0)
set -x -e -u
echo INFO: Delete old stuff
rm -rf .hg `seq 5`
echo INFO: Setup repository with 5 revisions
hg init
echo '[ui]' > .hg/hgrc
echo 'username=Joe User <juser#example.org>' >> .hg/hgrc
echo 'style = compact' >> .hg/hgrc
echo '[extensions]' >> .hg/hgrc
echo 'mq=' >> .hg/hgrc
for i in `seq 5`; do
touch $i && hg add $i && hg ci -m "changeset message $i" $i
done
hg log
echo INFO: Need to rename the commit message on the 3rd revision
echo INFO: Displays all patches
hg qseries
echo INFO: Import all revisions including the 3rd to the last one as patches
hg qimport -r $(hg identify -n -r 'children(2)'):tip
hg qseries
echo INFO: Pop patches
hg qpop -a
hg qseries
hg log
hg parent
hg commit --amend -m 'CHANGED MESSAGE'
hg log
echo INFO: Push all remaining patches
hg qpush -a
hg log
hg qseries
echo INFO: Remove all patches
hg qfinish -a
hg qseries && hg log && hg parent
Copy it to an empty directory an execute it e.g. via:
$ bash test.sh 2>&1 | tee log
The output should include the original changeset message:
+ hg log
[..]
2 53bc13f21b04 2011-08-31 17:26 +0200 juser
changeset message 3
And the rename operation the changed message:
+ hg log
[..]
2 3ff8a832d057 2011-08-31 17:26 +0200 juser
CHANGED MESSAGE
(Tested with Mercurial 4.5.2)
In TortoiseHg, right-click on the revision you want to modify. Choose Modify History->Import MQ. That will convert all the revisions up to and including the selected revision from Mercurial changesets into Mercurial Queue patches. Select the Patch you want to modify the message for, and it should automatically change the screen to the MQ editor. Edit the message which is in the middle of the screen, then click QRefresh. Finally, right click on the patch and choose Modify History->Finish Patch, which will convert it from a patch back into a change set.
Oh, this assumes that MQ is an active extension for TortoiseHG on this repository. If not, you should be able to click File->Settings, click Extensions, and click the mq checkbox. It should warn you that you have to close TortoiseHg before the extension is active, so close and reopen.
EDIT: As pointed out by users, don't use MQ, use commit --amend. This answer is mostly of historic interest now.
As others have mentioned the MQ extension is much more suited for this task, and you don't run the risk of destroying your work. To do this:
Enable the MQ extension, by adding something like this to your hgrc:
[extensions]
mq =
Update to the changeset you want to edit, typically tip:
hg up $rev
Import the current changeset into the queue:
hg qimport -r .
Refresh the patch, and edit the commit message:
hg qrefresh -e
Finish all applied patches (one, in this case) and store them as regular changesets:
hg qfinish -a
I'm not familiar with TortoiseHg, but the commands should be similar to those above. I also believe it's worth mentioning that editing history is risky; you should only do it if you're absolutely certain that the changeset hasn't been pushed to or pulled from anywhere else.
Rollback-and-reapply is realy simple solution, but it can help only with the last commit. Mercurial Queues is much more powerful thing (note that you need to enable Mercurial Queues Extension in order to use "hg q*" commands).
I did it this way. Firstly, don't push your changes or you are out of luck. Grab and install the collapse extension. Commit another dummy changeset. Then use collapse to combine the previous two changesets into one. It will prompt you for a new commit message, giving you the messages that you already have as a starting point. You have effectively changed your original commit message.
One hack i use if the revision i want to edit is not so old:
Let's say you're at rev 500 and you want to edit 497.
hg export -o rev497 497
hg export -o rev498 498
hg export -o rev499 499
hg export -o rev500 500
Edit rev497 file and change the message. (It's after first lines preceded by "#")
hg import rev497
hg import rev498
hg import rev499
hg import rev500
There is another approach with the MQ extension and the debug commands. This is a general way to modify history without losing data. Let me assume the same situation as Antonio.
// set current tip to rev 497
hg debugsetparents 497
hg debugrebuildstate
// hg add/remove if needed
hg commit
hg strip [-n] 498
A little gem in the discussion above - thanks to #Codest and #Kevin Pullin.
In TortoiseHg, there's a dropdown option adjacent to the commit button. Selecting "Amend current revision" brings back the comment and the list of files. SO useful.
Related
I have added 4 patches to my workspace.
While creating these patches, I had used qnew -m "<commit-message>". Now I noticed that I have not given proper commit message. How to modify all the commit messages?
I tried few things:
$ hg ci;
abort: cannot commit over an applied mq patch
$ hg qci
abort: no queue repository
You can do it only to the last applied patch on the queue via qrefresh. If you need to change all of the commit messages in the same way, e.g. adding an issue in front of the message, then you can write a script that would do it. Let's assume you have all you patches applied, then we will qref a patch and then qpop it until all of them changed. qheader will give you a message of the top patch. So using bash your script would roughly look as follows:
amendment="ISSUE-123: "
echo "Let's go and change the patches"
while [ $? -ne 0 ]; do
hg qref -m "${amendment} $(hg qheader)" && hg qpop
done
You should not use mq anymore. Instead, use histedit, commit --amend or rebase. See this post.
In Git - with it's immutable changeset objects and mutable refs - I know that the original commits remain, which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling after an 'oops' "history rewriting" moment.
For example, after a "history rewriting" git rebase the original changesets (cbe7698, 09c6268) are still there and a new changeset (08832c0) was added. I can easily restore/access the other changesets until such a time as they are pruned.
$ git log --oneline --graph --decorate $(git rev-list -g --all)
* 08832c0 (HEAD -> master) Added bar and quxx to foo.txt
| * cbe7698 Added quxx to foo.txt
| * 09c6268 Added bar to foo.txt
|/
* 895c9bb Added foo.txt
Likewise, even a git commit --amend preserves the original/amended commit (d58dabc) and adds a new changeset:
$ git log --oneline --graph --decorate $(git rev-list -g --all)
* d9bb795 (HEAD -> master) Added cats and dogs to pets.txt
| * d58dabc Added cats to pets.txt
|/
* 08832c0 Added pets.txt
However, what happens in Hg after a "history rewriting" operation?
Do the original commits cease to exist? And if they still do exist, how can they be accessed and/or recovered?
It depends on whether you have the evolve extension installed or not. If you have the evolve extension installed, the only command that will actually remove revisions from the repository is hg strip; other commands leave the original commits in place, but hide them. You can see them with hg log --hidden (or other commands with the --hidden flag). If you want to get rid of them permanently, hg strip --hidden -r 'extinct()' can be used [1].
Most people, however, will just be using base Mercurial. In this case (and for hg strip even with evolve), the removed changesets will be stored as bundles in .hg/strip-backup. A Mercurial bundle is basically a read-only overlay repository; you can use hg log -R, hg tip -R, hg incoming, hg pull, etc. on it. This is all you need in principle, but it can be a bit cumbersome typing out the paths.
For convenience, Facebook has published a number of experimental extensions for Mercurial. Among them, the backups extension provides a convenience command (hg backups) that basically lists the commits in each bundle in .hg/strip-backup (similar to what hg incoming with an appropriate template would do) and hg backups --recover to pull in the changesets from the stripped commits (similar to what hg pull would do).
[1] Note that even then, a backup will be stored in .hg/strip-backup. If you want to get rid of them really permanently, you will also have to remove that backup.
It is a very simple and stupid question,
I am working on 2 tasks and modified 2 sets of files in the code.
Now when I type 'hg ci', it checks in all the files. Can I remove certain files from the checkin i.e. do checking for only one task?
If I remove the files in the 'check in message' will they be removed from the checkin
Thanks for all the answers
This seems like a big flaw, My use case is very simple and general. Most of the time dev are working on various tasks , some are ready , some are not, bug fixes etc.
Now the only simple solution seems to be multiple local repos or clones
Use hg ci <files>... to commit only certain files in your working directory.
If you want to pick file by file you can use the record command. It ships with mercurial, but you have to turn it on if you want to use it by putting: record= in the [extensions] section of your ~/.hgrc.
It goes hunk by hunk, but you can answer for a whole file:
y - record this change
n - skip this change
s - skip remaining changes to this file
f - record remaining changes to this file
d - done, skip remaining changes and files
a - record all changes to all remaining files
q - quit, recording no changes
? - display help
I'll point out that if you're committing some files but not others it's certain that you've not run your test suite on the one change without the other, but maybe that doesn't apply in your case.
This isn't possible with mercurial out of the box. As have been suggested there are several ways of selecting what files you want to commit. To get this function via the commit message template, you would need an extension or a shell script wrapping the commit command. Here's one way to do that:
[alias]
ci = ! hg-partial-commit
hg-partial-commit:
#!/bin/sh
# partial commit
edit=$(mktemp ${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/$(basename $0).XXXXXXXXXXXX)
filelist=$(mktemp ${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/$(basename $0).XXXXXXXXXXXX)
logmessage=$(mktemp ${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/$(basename $0).XXXXXXXXXXXX)
cleanup="rm -f '$edit' '$filelist' '$logmessage'"
trap "$cleanup" 0 1 2 3 15
(
echo user: $(hg debugconfig ui.username)
echo branch: $(hg branch)
hg parents --template 'parent: {rev}:{node|short} {author} {date|isodate}\n'
echo
echo 'Enter commit message. Select files to commit by deleting lines:'
hg status 'set:not unknown()' | sed -e 's/^/#/'
) | sed -e 's/^/HG: /' >"$edit"
${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vi}} "$edit"
egrep -v '^HG:' "$edit" >"$logmessage"
egrep '^HG: #' "$edit" | cut -c8- >"$filelist"
hg commit -l "$logmessage" "listfile:$filelist"
$cleanup
The real problem here is the fact that you're doing changes related to different tasks jumbled together. Mercurial has a few ways you can keep things separate.
Task Branches
Suppose you've been working on a task and you've checked in a few times since you last pulled, but things aren't ready to share yet.
o----o----B----o----o----o
Here, B is the revision where you started your changes. What we do is (after making sure our current changes are checked in):
> hg update -r B
<do our work on the other task>
> hg commit
We've now created a new branch with the changes for this task separated from the changes for our original task.
o----o----B----o----o----o
\
----o
We can do this for as many different tasks as we want. The only problem is that sometimes remembering which branch is which can be awkward. This is where features like bookmarks come in useful. A bookmark is a tag which moves forward as commits are made so that it always points at the head of a branch.
Mercurial Queues
MQ adds the ability to work on changes incrementally and move between them by pushing and poping then off a stack (or "Queue" I guess). So if I had a set of uncommitted changes that I needed to split up I'd:
> hg qrecord taska
> hg qrecord taskb
> hg qrecord taskc
I'd use the record extension (or more likely the crecord extension) to select which parts of files I want to select.
If I needed to go back to taska and make some changes:
> hg qpop; hg qpop # pop two off the queue to go back to task a
<Do changes>
> hg qrefresh # update task a with the new changes
When I want to turn the queue into normal changesets:
> hg qpush or hg qpop # get the changes I want converted onto the queue
> hg qfinish -a # converts mq changes to normal changesets
There's other methods too, but that will do for now.
You will unavoidably have to either specify the files that you want to add or the files you want to leave out. If you have a lot of files, as you indicate above, the following steps will simplify the procedure (I'm assuming a UNIX-ish system here, Windows would be slightly different).
First, generate a list of changed files:
hg status -mard -n >/tmp/changedlist.txt
The -mard options will list all files that were modified, added, removed, or delated. The -n option will list them without the status prefix so that all you have is a raw list of files.
Second, edit /tmp/changedlist.txt with your favorite text editor so that it contains only the files you wish to commit.
Third, commit these files:
hg commit `cat /tmp/changedlist.txt`
You will be able to review the files to be committed before actually performing the commit.
Alternatively, you can add more files to a commit incrementally by using
`hg commit --amend file...`
Here, hg commit --amend will not create a new commit, but add the new files to the existing commit. So, you start out with committing just a couple of files, then incrementally adding more until you are done. This still requires you to type all of them in.
For yet another alternative, you can use Mercurial Queues to split a commit in more sophisticated ways, but that's a bit more of an advanced topic.
I work on a team where we have a code in a mercurial repository with several subrepositories:
main/
main/subrepo1/
main/subrepo1/subrepo2/
The default behavior of Mercurial is that when a hg commit is performed in "main", any outstanding changes in the subrepositories "subrepo1" and "subrepo2" will also be committed. Similarly, when "main" is pushed, any outgoing commits in "subrepo1" and "subrepo2" will also be pushed.
We find that people frequently inadvertently commit and push changes in their subrepositories (because they forgot they had made changes, and hg status by default does not show recursive changes). We also find that such global commits / pushes are almost always accidental in our team.
Mercurial 1.7 recently improved the situation with hg status -S and hg outgoing -S, which show changes in subrepositories; but still, this requires people to be paying attention.
Is there a way in Mercurial to make hg commit and hg push abort if there are changes/commits in subrepostories that would otherwise be committed/pushed?
Since Mercurial 1.8 there is a configuration setting that disables recursive commits. In the parent repositories .hg/hgrc you can add:
[ui]
commitsubrepos = no
If a commit in the parent repository finds uncommitted changes in a subrepository the whole commit is aborted, instead of silently committing the subrepositories.
Mercurial 2.0 automatically prevents you from committing subrepositories unless you manually specify the --subrepos (or, alternatively, -S) argument to commit.
For example, you try to perform a commit while there are pending changes in a subrepository, you get the following message:
# hg commit -m 'change main repo'
abort: uncommitted changes in subrepo hello
(use --subrepos for recursive commit)
You can successfully perform the commit, however, by adding --subrepos to the command:
# hg commit --subrepos -m 'commit subrepos'
committing subrepository hello
Some things to still be careful about: If you have changed the revision a subrepository is currently at, but not the contents of the subrepository, Mercurial will happily commit the version change without the --subrepos flag. Further, recursive pushes are still performed without warning.
One notion is to use URLs to which you have read-only access in your .hgsub files. Then when you do actually want to push in the subrepo you can just cd into it and do a hg push THE_READ_WRITE_URL.
One possible solution, using VonC's "pre-commit" idea.
Setup two scripts; the first check_subrepo_commit.sh:
#!/bin/bash
# If the environment variable "SUBREPO" is set, allow changes.
[ "x$SUBREPO" != "x" ] && exit 0
# Otherwise, ensure that subrepositories have not changed.
LOCAL_CHANGES=`hg status -a -m`
GLOBAL_CHANGES=`hg status -S -a -m`
if [ "x${LOCAL_CHANGES}" != "x$GLOBAL_CHANGES" ]; then
echo "Subrepository changes exist!"
exit 1
fi
exit 0
The second, check_subrepo_push.sh:
#!/bin/bash
# If the environment variable "SUBREPO" is set, allow changes.
[ "x$SUBREPO" != "x" ] && exit 0
# Otherwise, ensure that subrepositories have not changed.
LOCAL_CHANGES=`hg outgoing | grep '^changeset:'`
GLOBAL_CHANGES=`hg outgoing -S | grep '^changeset:'`
if [ "x${LOCAL_CHANGES}" != "x$GLOBAL_CHANGES" ]; then
echo "Global changes exist!"
exit 1
fi
exit 0
Add the following to your .hgrc:
[hooks]
pre-commit.subrepo = check_subrepo_commit.sh
pre-push.subrepo = check_subrepo_push.sh
By default, hg push and hg commit will abort if there are outstanding changes in subrepositories. Running a command like so:
SUBREPO=1 hg commit
will override the check, allowing you to perform the global commit/push if you really want to.
May be a pre-commit hook (not precommit) could do the hg status -S for you, and block the commit if it detects any changes?
I'm in the process of learning Mercurial, and even though I installed TortoiseHG, I find myself turning more and more to the command line.
So often I would like to check what the result of a given hg command would be before I actually run it. Is there any equivalent to the -whatif switch known from PowerShell I can use, or how would you go about checking what would be committed using a given hg commit statement?
When you do commit your message editor will contain a list of files that will be committed in the ignored section. If you commit with hg -m "message" this won't work as the editor step is skipped:
HG: Enter commit message. Lines beginning with 'HG:' are removed.
HG: Leave message empty to abort commit.
HG: --
HG: user: User <user#user.land>
HG: branch 'default'
HG: changed myfile.yxy
You can use hg commit and hg rollback to undo the last commit if it contained a file that you did not want to commit. The rollback works as long as you did not hg push to another repository.
Status works with the same patterns as commit. You can use hg status some/path/* and then hg commit some/path/* only replacing the command to use.
Often the -n switch or --dry-run switch will show you what would have happened for a particular command. commit doesn't have an -n switch, but you could run hg diff to see the actual changes, or hg status to see what's going on with each file.