4.7. Changelog

The changelog tool (also known as the repository explorer) is used to visualize the revision history of your repository and to perform any maintenence tasks that involve changesets. It presents a graph of the revision history, showing the parent/child relationship of each change. At each revision you can view the files that were modified and the contents of those changes.

Changelog viewer dialog with main toolbar hidden

New in 0.9, the changelog tool has a menu bar for accessing tool functions and for launching other tools.

Tools

Launch other TortoiseHg tools as separate processes

View

Toggle the visibility of various features, or refresh views

Navigate

Select specific changesets in your repository history

Synchronize

Access synchronization functions, more below

Help

Help contents shows this web page. About shows TortoiseHg version info

The toolbar buttons from left to right:

Refresh

Reload the revision history (if you commit in another window, etc)

Synchronize

Opens synchronize tool to communicate changes with other repositories

Patch Queue

Toggles the display of the MQ pane. This button is only visible when the MQ extension has been enabled by the user.

Load more

load the next N revisions into the graph

Load all

load all remaining revisions into the graph

4.7.1. Sync Bar

Synchronization features in changelog tool

From left to right...

Incoming

Download incoming changesets from the remote repository, store them in a temporary bundle file, then enter bundle preview mode with the incoming changes applied. Incoming changesets will have a ‘down’ arrow in the revision graph.

Accept

Accept (pull) the changesets from the previewed bundle. This button is only sensitive when previewing a changeset bundle. The after-pull effect is respected after pulling from a bundle.

Reject

Reject the changesets from the previewed bundle and exit preview mode. This button is only sensitive when previewing a changeset bundle.

Pull

Pull incoming changesets from the remote repository, then apply after-pull effect (update, fetch, or rebase).

Outgoing

Determine outgoing changesets that would be pushed to the remote repository. Outgoing changesets are marked with an ‘up’ arrow.

Push

Push outgoing changesets to the remote repository.

Email

Email outgoing changesets to the remote repository.

Stop

Stop current transaction. The button is only sensitive during outgoing commands.

To the right of the Stop button is a combo box containing all of the configured peer repository paths for the current repository. The default path is selected at startup, if it has been configured. See hg.1.html#urls for details on specifying remote repository URLs.

To the right of the path combo box is the After Pull combo that selects the operation which is performed after every pull operation triggered by the sync bar. The user must have the rebase extension enabled in order for that option to be available in the after pull combo. The same is true of the fetch extension and it’s post pull operation.

To the right of the After Pull combo is the Settings button. It opens the repository settings tool on the Sync tab where the after pull configurable and peer repository paths can be configured.

Changesets which are added to the repository after the changelog tool was opened are marked with green stars in the graph. This includes recent commits, pulled changesets, and applied patches.

Note

To clear the new, incoming, and outgoing marks from the changeset graph, use View -> Reset Marks

4.7.2. Search Bar

Filter features in changelog tool

The search bar allows one to quickly filter the changesets panel. Buttons from right to left...

All

Show all changesets in the respository. Essentially removes all filters.

Tagged

Show only changesets with tags.

Ancestry

Show only changesets that are ancestors of the currently selected changeset. This option is only sensitive when a revision is selected.

Parents

Show only the working directory parent revisions. Unless a merge is in progress, this will be only one revision.

Heads

Show only repository heads (changesets without any child revisions).

Merges

Show only merge changesets (changesets with two parents)

Hide Merges

A toggle button, not a radio like the other buttons in the search bar, which toggles the display of merge changesets.

Branches

A combo box with the list of named branches in your repository. See Repo Settings -> Changelog -> Dead Branches for a method to prune names from this combo box.

Custom Filter Combo

Finally there is a combo box that selects among the various filter types that can be manually specified.

To specify a custom filter, the user selects the filter type, enters the search text of that type, and then hits return in the text entry.

Rev Range

Parse the user text as a revision range. See hg.1.html#revisions for details on how to specify revision ranges.

File Patterns

Parse the user text as a file pattern glob, unless the user text is prefixed with a pattern type like regexp:. See hg.1.html#patterns for details on how to specify file patterns.

Keywords

Parse the user text as a keyword pattern that should be matched against changeset meta data like comitter, message, etc.

Date

Parse the user text as a date range. See hg.1.html#dates for details on how to specify date ranges.

User

Parse the user text as a user / comitter name.

4.7.3. Revision Graph Details

The graph column shows the child-parent relationships between revisions in your repository history. This column auto-sizes for as many lines of ancestry that are required to visualize the revisions you have loaded. The column has an initial hard-limit width to prevent some degenerative cases from breaking the viewer, but can be resized after refreshes.

4.7.4. Revision Context Menus

Right-clicking on a revision in the (top) graph pane will bring up the revision context menu.

Visualize Change

open this change in your visual diff tool

Display Change

open this changeset in the changeset browser (more below)

Diff to Local

display changes (visual diff) between this revision and your current working directory

Copy Hash

copy current revision’s full hash to the clipboard

Update

update your working directory to this revision [1]

Merge With

merge with this revision [2]

Export Patch

generate a patch file containing this revision’s changes

Email Patch

send this revision’s changes to email recipient [3]

Bundle rev:tip

create a bundle with all revs from selected to tip

Add/Remove Tag

opens the TortoiseHg tag dialog with this revision selected

Backout revision

create a backout changeset for selected revision

Revert

revert working copy to this revision’s contents, without updating working directory parent revision. Use with care.

Archive...

open the archive dialog for this revision, allowing user to generate a backup copy of the repository at that revision.

Transplant to local

Transplant selected revision onto the current working parent. Only visible when the transplant extension is enabled

qimport

Import selected revision into the current patch queue. Only valid for qbase or checked out head revision. Only visible when MQ is enabled

Strip Revision...

Remove the selected revision and all of it’s descendants from the repository [4] Only visible when MQ is enabled

If you right-click on a row other than the one that was currently selected, you get a secondary context menu which defines commands that operation on revision ranges.

Diff with selected

Opens status viewer with cumulative changes of the range of changesets. The status viewer allows cherry picked changes to be saved to a file.

Visual Diff with selected [5]

Opens visual diff window with cumulative changes of the range of changesets.

Email from here to selected

Opens email dialog with range of changesets.

Bundle from here to selected

Creates a bundle file with range of changesets.

Export patches from here to selected

Creates a patch file for each changeset in selected range.

Merge with selected [6]

Merges this revision with the other selected revision. If neither revision is currently checked out, the merge dialog will be forced to update to the first selected revision before starting the merge. This will fail if the working directory is not clean.

Transplant revision range to local

Transplant selected range of changesets on to current working parent revision. Only visible when the transplant extension is enabled

Rebase on top of selected

Rebase selected changeset and ancestors on top of original selected revision. Only visible when the rebase extension is enabled

qimport from here to selected

Import selected revision range into the current patch queue. Only visible when MQ is enabled

[1]	Opens the TortoiseHg update dialog with this revision selected.

[2]	Opens the TortoiseHg merge dialog with this revision selected.

[3]	Opens the TortoiseHg email dialog with this revision selected.

[4]	The strip command will store the stripped revisions in a bundle file that can later be reapplied. See also.

[5]	Global Settings ‣ TortoiseHg ‣ Visual Diff Command

[6]	Only sensitive if the selected revision is your current working directory parent

4.7.5. File Context Menus

Right-clicking on filenames in the file list (bottom left) pane will bring up a context menu for the selected file:

Visual Diff

Open this revision of the file in your visual diff tool

Diff to Local

Visualize differences between this revision and your checked out version

View at Revision

Open this revision of the file in your visual editor [7]

Save at Revision

Write this revision of the file to specified location

File History

Show revisions that modified this file [8]

Annotate File

Open this file in the datamine app, annotated at this revision

Revert File Contents

Checkout this specific revision of this file [9]

[7]	Global Settings ‣ TortoiseHg ‣ Visual Editor

[8]	Does not show revisions where a file was deleted, as this is only a manifest change, it does not modify the file’s history.

[9]	The new contents will appear as local changes and must be committed.

4.7.6. Changeset browser

The changeset browser will only show a single file’s diffs at a time, as a performance optimization. If you would like to see all of the file diffs at once, click on the [All Files] row. The changeset browser will also skip displaying diffs for files which are above a maximum limit. See Global Settings ‣ TortoiseHg ‣ Max Diff Size. The size limit can be temporarily disabled by toggling View -> Ignore Max Diff Size.

The changelog and datamine tools can open the changeset browser to view a single revision or the combined effect of a range of revisions. The changeset browser is very similar to the commit and shelve tools. It has a file list on the left of all files that have been changed, and a diff pane on the right with the changes to each file.

The diff pane is tabbed and allows one to select files and hunks that you wish to extract from the changeset(s) you are browsing and write them to a patch file using the Save as toolbar button. This is a very efficient way to cherry pick changes from a repository. This changeset browser also supports the Ctrl-C keyboard accelerator to copy hightlighted diff hunks to the clipboard.

Unfortunately, TortoiseHg still does not have a dialog for importing patches into a repository, so this must be done on the command line with the hg import command.

4.7.7. Keyboard navigation

Ctrl-P

Zoom to the working directory parent revision

Ctrl-D

Display visual diffs for selected changeset or file

Ctrl-R

Refresh repository contents

4.7.8. Configurables

The changelog browser has a few configurable options that can be set in the TortoiseHg Settings dialog on the Changelog tab.

Author coloring

If true, each author’s changeset will be given a unique color

Long Summary

Concatenate commit message lines until 80 chars are reached

Graph batch limit

Number of revisions to read in each batch load

Copy Hash

Copy a revision’s changeset id hash to the clipboard when selected [DEPRECATED]

Dead Branches

Comma separated list of branch names that should be ignored when building a list of branch names for a repository.

Branch Colors

Space separated list of branch names and colors on the form branch:#XXXXXX. Spaces and colons in the branch name must be escaped using a backslash (\). Likewise some other characters can be escaped in this way, e.g. \u0040 will be decoded to the @ character, and \n to a linefeed.

Hide Tags

Space separated list of tags that will not be shown. Useful example: Specify “qbase qparent qtip” to hide the standard tags inserted by the Mercurial Queues Extension.

Use Expander

Show changeset details within an expander. When contained within the expander, the details do not scroll with the changeset contents.

The exact colors given to particular users can be configured by adding lines like these to your Mercurial.ini file:

[tortoisehg]
authorcolor.USERNAME = color

The changelog browser also respects the following settings on the TortoiseHg tab:

Tab Width

Number of spaces to expand tabs in diffs

Max Diff Size

Maximum size of file to be diffed

Bottom Diffs

Show diffs below file list

4.7.9. From command line

The changelog viewer can be started from command line

hgtk log [OPTIONS] [FILE]

aliases: history

changelog viewer

options:

 -l --limit  limit number of changes displayed

use "hgtk -v help log" to show global options