The document summarizes the Mercurial Histedit extension which allows altering the commit history. It describes how to invoke histedit on a specific revision or uncommitted changes. When invoked, it opens a text editor showing the list of commits which can then be picked, folded, dropped, edited or have their message edited. Histedit allows rewriting commits in the history to fix mistakes or reorganize changes.

1. Mercurial Histedit extension
Alter your commit history
for a great good

2. Set Up
● Enabling after 2.3:
– [extensions]
histedit =
● Before:
– [extensions]
– histedit = ~/path/to/histedit/hg_histedit.py

3. Invokation
● hg histedit <revision number>
– It will use commits from that revision onwards

4. Invokation
● hg histedit <revision number>
– It will use commits from that revision onwards
● hg histedit –outgoing
– Use commits not yet commited (most useful, IMO)

5. Commit edition
The text editor associated to Mercurial will be opened with the
list of commits:
pick c561b4e977df Add beta
pick 030b686bedc4 Add gamma
pick 7c2fd3b9020c Add delta
# Edit history between c561b4e977df and 7c2fd3b9020c
#
# Commands:
# p, pick = use commit
# e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
# f, fold = use commit, but fold into previous commit
# d, drop = remove commit from history
#
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

6. Commands
● pick
– Simply accepts the changeset as is. This is the
default action.

7. Commands
● pick
– Simply accepts the changeset as is. This is the
default action.
● fold
– Combines a changeset with the previous
changeset in the list and opens an editor to edit
the commit message.

8. Commands
● pick
– Simply accepts the changeset as is. This is the default action.
● fold
– Combines a changeset with the previous changeset in the list and
opens an editor to edit the commit message.
● drop
– Removes the changeset from history. Important: removing a
commit from history does not remove code changes. Use strip
or backout or any other tool for that.

9. Commands
● Edit
– Drops to the command prompt, allowing to edit
files freely to commit some changes as a separate
commit.
– When done, any remaining uncommitted changes
will be committed as well.
– When done, run hg histedit --continue to finish this
step or hg histedit --abort to abandon the new
changes and keep the previous state.

10. Commands
● mess
– Simply edit commit message. Useful for typos and
minor mistakes.

11. End
“All your commits belong to us”

12. End
“All your commits belong to us”
QUESTIONS