hg evolve [OPTIONS]...
aliases: stabilize, solve
solve troubled changesets in your repository
Modifying history can lead to various types of troubled changesets: orphan, phase-divergent, or content-divergent. The evolve command resolves your troubles by executing one of the following actions:
If you pass no arguments, evolve works in automatic mode: it will execute a single action to reduce instability related to your working copy. There are two cases for this action. First, if the parent of your working copy is obsolete, evolve updates to the parent's successor. Second, if the working copy parent is not obsolete but has obsolete predecessors, then evolve determines if there is an orphan changeset that can be rebased onto the working copy parent in order to reduce instability. If so, evolve rebases that changeset. If not, evolve refuses to guess your intention, and gives a hint about what you might want to do next.
When "--update" is used, successful evolve operations update the working directory to the newly created changesets. Moreover, an update will always be performed if the current working directory parent is obsolete.
Automatic mode only handles common use cases. For example, it avoids taking action in the case of ambiguity, and it ignores orphan changesets that are not related to your working copy. It also refuses to solve phase-divergent or content-divergent changesets unless you explicitly request such behavior (see below).
Eliminating all instability around your working copy may require multiple invocations of 'hg evolve' if you use "--rev" or "--no-all". Use "--all" (which is the default behavior) to recursively select and evolve all orphan changesets that can be rebased onto the working copy parent. This is more powerful than successive invocations, since "--all" handles ambiguous cases (e.g. orphan changesets with multiple children) by evolving all branches.
When your repository cannot be handled by automatic mode, you might need to use "--rev" to specify a changeset to evolve. For example, if you have an orphan changeset that is not related to the working copy parent, you could use "--rev" to evolve it. Or, if some changeset has multiple orphan children, evolve in automatic mode refuses to guess which one to evolve; you have to use "--rev" in that case.
Alternately, "--any" makes evolve search for the next evolvable changeset regardless of whether it is related to the working copy parent.
You can supply multiple revisions to evolve multiple troubled changesets in a single invocation. In revset terms, "--any" is equivalent to "--rev first(orphan())". "--rev" and "--all" are mutually exclusive, as are "--rev" and "--any".
"hg evolve --any --all" is useful for cleaning up instability across all branches, letting evolve figure out the appropriate order and destination.
When you have troubled changesets that are not orphan, 'hg evolve' refuses to consider them unless you specify the category of trouble you wish to resolve, with "--phase-divergent" or "--content-divergent". These options are currently mutually exclusive with each other and with "--orphan" (the default). You can combine "--phase-divergent" or "--content-divergent" with "--rev", "--all", or "--any".
You can also use the evolve command to list the troubles affecting your repository by using the --list flag. You can choose to display only some categories of troubles with the --orphan, --content-divergent or --phase-divergent flags.
The 'hg evolve' command is an all purpose tool that solves all kinds of instabilities in your repository. Sometimes, instability resolution will lead to merge conflicts that cannot be solved without human intervention (same as 'hg merge'). This can lead to an "interrupted state" where human assistance is requested. There are three things which you can do when you face a similar situation:
(use 'hg help -e evolve' to show help for the evolve extension)
options ([+] can be repeated):
-n | --dry-run | do not perform actions, just print what would be done |
--confirm | ask for confirmation before performing the action | |
-A | --any | also consider troubled changesets unrelated to current working directory |
-r | --rev REV [+] | solves troubles of these revisions |
--phase-divergent | solves only phase-divergent changesets | |
--content-divergent | solves only content-divergent changesets | |
--orphan | solves only orphan changesets (default) | |
-a | --all | evolve all troubled changesets related to the current working directory and its descendants (default) |
--update | update to the head of evolved changesets | |
-c | --continue | continue an interrupted evolution |
--stop | stop the interrupted evolution | |
--abort | abort the interrupted evolution | |
-l | --list | provide details on troubled changesets in the repo |
-t | --tool TOOL | specify merge tool |
global options ([+] can be repeated):
-R | --repository REPO | repository root directory or name of overlay bundle file |
--cwd DIR | change working directory | |
-y | --noninteractive | do not prompt, automatically pick the first choice for all prompts |
-q | --quiet | suppress output |
-v | --verbose | enable additional output |
--color TYPE | when to colorize (boolean, always, auto, never, or debug) | |
--config CONFIG [+] | set/override config option (use 'section.name=value') | |
--debug | enable debugging output | |
--debugger | start debugger | |
--encoding ENCODE | set the charset encoding (default: UTF-8) | |
--encodingmode MODE | set the charset encoding mode (default: strict) | |
--traceback | always print a traceback on exception | |
--time | time how long the command takes | |
--profile | print command execution profile | |
--version | output version information and exit | |
-h | --help | display help and exit |
--hidden | consider hidden changesets | |
--pager TYPE | when to paginate (boolean, always, auto, or never) (default: auto) |