Is it possible to update back through the point of adding subrepos?

Question

I've had a folder in my repository. Then I have made this folder a subrepository (with the very same files), commited and pushed this change. Now I can't update back through that commit. Here's the message I get:

% hg update --repository <path to repo> --config ui.merge=internal:fail --rev 1159 --clean
abort: path 'subrepo\include\header.h' is inside nested repo 'subrepo'
[command returned code 255 Wed Dec 05 11:57:45 2012]

Where subrepo is the name of that folder where subrepo now resides. Any way to defeat this and update to earlier revision?

Answer 1

Found a solution: delete the folder in question, then update with the "discard changes" option. Works like charm.

Answer 2

After a bit of googling, this looks like it's directly related to Caveat 3, to quote "Update/merge currently can't remove subrepositories entirely as that might lose local-only changes". Also caveat 5 states "Collisions between normal files and subrepos are not handled".

Interestingly, and something I'd not seen before, Subrepositories are considered a "feature of last resort", which is to say something you should try not to use if you can help it.

Probably not the answer you were looking for.

A workaround is to get to your revision by cloning... you can use a new clone based on a revision just before you created the subrepo:

% hg clone --repository <path to repo> new_copy --rev 1159

This will clone everything up to that point, so you will lose any "future history", but will at least be able to get back to an earlier version.