rollback deprecation

[Martin Geisler]

Kevin Bullock <kbullock+mercurial at ringworld.org> writes:

> On 17 Jul 2013, at 9:07 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>
>> Martin Geisler <martin <at> geisler.net> writes:
>> 
>>> 
>>> # HG changeset patch
>>> # User Martin Geisler <martin <at> geisler.net>
>>> # Date 1374050974 -7200
>>> #      Wed Jul 17 10:49:34 2013 +0200
>>> # Node ID 85d4ebb3d89e29657c4d7365174d9120ba88ad34
>>> # Parent  ea4342d0e6fea19c8c4b7651f36929cd682afae7
>>> rollback: add reference to "hg commit --amend"
>>> 
>>> Now that rollback is deprecated (yay!) users might need a pointer to
>>> the alternative for 99% of the cases where I used rollback.
>> 
>> Rollback is deprecated? What is the recommended way to undo a bogus
>> commit (especially a merge or graft)?
>> AFAICT, "strip" isn't part of the core command set.

You should be able to use 'hg commit --amend' in those case too. I just
tested it and I can amend both a merge commit and a graft commit just
fine with Mercurial 2.6.3.

So I believe the better answer to your question is to use --amend. It is
only if you need to really get rid of a commit (as opposed to correcting
it) that --amend falls short.

> The same way we've always recommended: clone up to the parent of the
> bad revision (and any other heads), then throw away the old clone.

That advice may be technically true, I think it is only half the truth.

Even for a very small project like Mercurial where 'make local' takes
seconds, you typically need more than what you describe here: you need
to copy your .hg/hgrc file (mine contains useful paths), copy any patch
queues (plural) you have around and maybe copy .hg/strip-backsups. Did I
forget to copy something related to evolve -- I'm not 100% sure.

So it is not just a matter of

  cd ..
  hg clone -r '.^' foo foo-stripped
  rm -r foo
  mv foo-stripped foo

(four commands!) to remove a commit.

You probably know this already, but things become more complex when the
working copy contain costly build artifacts. Please don't ignore that by
telling people to "just clone and throw away the old repo".

-- 
Martin Geisler