hg: Change root of named branch

Question

I created a named branch in our repository for a feature - however, against my better judgement, I branched off of our head revision instead of an earlier one (where I branched off multiple feature branches).

I've made some commits to this branch - they are local only, not yet pushed - but I'd like to move the branch root to an earlier revision on my default branch. I don't want to make any changes to my commits (as there won't be any conflicts); I basically just want to change the parent revision that the branch came from, if that's possible.

How can I do this easily in Mercurial?

Answer 1

just want to change the parent revision that the branch came from

Just rebase: hg rebase -s MOVED_ROOT -d NEW_PARENT_OF_MOVED_ROOT --keepbranches

Answer 2

Well, it's a bit more complex than calling one command, but you can do it:

1. Export your branch changesets into patch file
2. Strip branch changesets
3. Update to earlier revision and create new branch
4. Import changesets from patch file

Here is sample list of commands:

hg init
echo "Hello" > readme.txt
hg addremove
hg commit -m "Hello added"
echo "Hello2" >> readme.txt
hg commit -m "Hello2 added"
hg branch feature
echo "Feature added" >> readme.txt
hg commit -m "Feature added"
echo "Feature2 added" >> readme.txt
hg commit -m "Feature2 added"
hg export -o patch 2:3
hg strip 2:3
hg up 0
hg branch feature
hg import patch

P.S. For strip command you need to enable mq extension.