Revision Argument Plan

Main proponents: Martin von Zweigbergk

Current state

Many commands accept a --rev argument. There are different categories of what they're used for, as the following sub-sections will detail.

Commands that default to the working copy

These commands default to the working copy but allow the user to pass a --rev to work on a different commit. They treat the working copy the same as that other commit.

• hg annotate

• hg files

• hg grep

• hg identify

• hg parents (deprecated)

• hg topic (from the topic extension)

Commands that default to the working copy's parent

These commands default to the working copy parent. Some of them allow --rev 'wdir()'.

• hg cat (allows `--rev 'wdir()')

• hg phase

• hg log (kind of, it defaults to all revisions, but not including wdir() and null)

• hg manifest (allows `--rev 'wdir()')

• hg revert

I haven't listed hg rebase here, because even though it has a --rev option, it defaults to the --base option.

Commands that work on two commits

These commands use --rev to specify two commits, but they're used differently. That was a mistake in my opinion.

• hg status --rev X --rev Y

• hg diff --rev X --rev Y

Commands that currently work on the working copy

• hg absorb

• hg add

• hg copy

• hg forget

• hg rename

• hg remove

• hg resolve

hg branch doesn't quite qualify for this list because it doesn't (yet) accept --rev.

Commands that cannot work on the working copy

These commands are not very interesting for the discussion, but I've added them here for completeness.

• hg bisect [--good|--bad]

• hg bookmarks

• hg bundle

• hg outgoing

• hg pull

• hg push

• hg tag

Others

• hg status --change X

  • This one makes --change X work like regular diff for the working copy (i.e. hg status --change 'wdir()' is effectively the default)

Future plans