Using Mercurial Bookmarks

Tutorial on how to use Mercurial bookmarks.

This is a brief "quick start" guide to using Mercurial Bookmarks for Thunderbird development. For more in-depth documentation see the Using Bookmarks section of Mercurial for Mozillians and the Bookmarks page on the Mercurial Wiki.

If you have used git, it will help to know that bookmarks in Mercurial are very similar to branches in git and involve similar workflows. (Note that Mercurial's branches are very different from git branches.) You may find it helpful learn more about the similarities and differences between Mercurial and Git. For example, see the in-depth discussion in Mercurial for Git Users (and vice versa).

Bookmarks are basically labels that point to a given changeset (or a given "commit" in git terminology). They can point to different changesets at different times (more on this below).

For any of the commands below, you can learn more about them by running hg commandname --help.

Working on a particular Bug or Feature

A common use case for bookmarks is for working on a given feature or bug. A bookmark is a label you use to manage your work on one bug or feature, alongside other work on other bugs or features. Here's an example.

Run hg pull to download the latest changes from the remote repository.
Run hg update tip to update your current working directory
to the most recent changeset that you just downloaded.
Run the command hg bookmark some-bookmark-name to create a bookmark
that points to the current changeset.
Usually the name of the bookmark is related to the bug or feature you are working on.
Run hg bookmarks to list all of your bookmarks and see which one is currently active.
The one you just created should now be active.
You can run hg log --graph or hg wip to see which bookmarks point to which changesets.
Or you may prefer using a GUI tool like
TortoiseHG
that provides a more graphical overview.
Make changes to the code until you are ready to commit them.
Run hg status and hg diff to check what files and changes you are about to commit.
If you need to add a new file use hg add some-filename before committing.
Commit your changes with hg commit -m "Bug ##### - fixing something amazing.".
The -m is short for --message and lets you provide a commit message for your changeset.
"Bug ##### - fixing something amazing" is the format we recommend for the commit message,
specifying the number of the Bug you're working on and a small description stating what you fixed.
Use hg log --graph to see examples of commit messages.
Run hg log --graph or hg wip and note how the bookmark has moved to the changeset that you
just committed.
The active bookmark will automatically move to the most recent changeset as you commit your changes.
That way you can make a series of commits and the bookmark will always point to the most recent one.
You can use hg commit --amend to modify the current changeset rather than making a new one.

Working on more than one Bug or Feature

Being able to work on more than one bug or feature, and easily switch between working on one or the other, is a typical use case for bookmarks.

Say you have been working on feature A using the bookmark feature-A as described above, but now you want to switch to working on feature B. Here is how that can work.

Run hg log --graph or hg wip and copy the identifying number of the first changeset
that comes before your changesets for feature A.
For example if you see "changeset: 26858:4a2e39cfc820",
you can copy either the "26858" or the "4a2e39cfc820" to identify this changeset.
Let's say we use 26858.
Run hg update --rev 26858 to change the state of your current working directory to that changeset.
Run hg bookmark feature-B to create a new bookmark to work on feature B.
It will currently point to changeset 26858.
Make some changes and do one or more commits for feature B.
To go back to working on feature A, you run the command hg update feature-A.
That updates your working directory to the feature-A changeset
and makes feature-A the active bookmark.
Once you've made some changes and done some commits for feature A,
you may want to go back to working on feature B.
To do that you would run hg update feature-B.
That updates your working directory to the feature-B changeset
and makes feature-B the active bookmark.

Rebasing Before Submitting to Phabricator

Say you are ready to submit one or more patches. Often other changes will have landed in the Thunderbird code base since you started your work. In that case it is best to make sure that your changes will still apply to the current state of comm-central. We can do that using hg rebase.

Pull down any new changesets with hg pull.
Use hg log --graph or hg wip to see if there are new changesets and
get the number (or the hash) of the first changeset
from the newly pulled changesets.
Let's say its number is 54321.
Rebase your branch on to the newest changeset
with the command hg rebase -b my-bookmark-name -d 54321.
The -b is for bookmark and the -d is for destination.
We are rebasing the changesets from the bookmark my-bookmark-name
onto the destination changeset 54321.

For example, you have a series of changesets like so:

  A -> B -> C -> D -> E

Where C, D, and E are new changesets you have created, and your bookmark "my-bookmark-name" points to changeset E.

Then, after you do hg pull you have this:

  A -> B -> F -> G -> H
        \
         C -> D -> E

Where F, G, and H are changesets that have been added to comm-central since you started working on your changes in C, D, and E.

Then, after you do hg rebase -b my-bookmark-name -d tip you have:

  A -> B -> F -> G -> H -> C2 -> D2 -> E2

Where Mercurial has re-applied C on top of H, then D on top of C2, then E on top of D2.

Rebasing can be useful in other situations too. Another variation is hg rebase -s 44444 -d 54321. Where -s indicates a source changset. That will apply the source changeset on top of the destination changeset.

So, in the example above, if changeset C had the number 44444, then hg rebase -s 44444 -d 54321 would do the same thing as hg rebase -b my-bookmark-name -d 54321.

Merge Conflicts When Rebasing

What if there are "merge conflicts"? Say, in the example above, what if the same lines of a given file were changed in different ways by both changesets H and D, and Mercurial couldn't figure out what to do?

In that case, Mercurial will pause the rebase operation and guide you through the process of resolving the conflicts.

First Mercurial will tell you which files have conflicts. Open those files in your editor to fix the conflicts manually. There you will find something like the following, where you can see the two versions of the code that conflict:

<<<<<<< local
        // These are lines that were changed by changeset H!
        anAwesomeFunction(foo);
=======
        // But in changeset D they were changed in a different way!
        anEndearingFunction(bar);
>>>>>>> other

Edit those lines to resolve the conflict, so that the code is what it should be after changeset D. Once all such conflicts are fixed, save the file(s).

Then back in the terminal run the command hg resolve --mark to mark the conflicts as resolved.

And then do hg rebase --continue and Mercurial will continue the rebase operation.

To get back to the state of things before the rebase operation started, do hg rebase --abort.

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Last updated 6 months ago

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