File History vs. Path History

[Paul Mensonides]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2013 10:02:47 +0100, Christophe HENRY wrote:

> Le Sat, 19 Jan 2013 08:17:31 +0000 (UTC) Paul Mensonides
> <pmenso57 at comcast.net> a écrit :
> 
>> Hi all.
>> 
>> Is it possible to extract a history for a particular file as opposed to
>> a particular path?  For example,
>> (...)
> 
> In a nutshell, how can we use the SVN's peg revision in Mercurial?

Basically, yes.

I maintain a propriety software project for a company.  The source for the 
software is in a Mercurial repository, and all is well.  I have a weirder 
use case that isn't really related to normal source control.

The files (XML) created *by* the software are stored in a separate 
Mercurial repository.  These files refer to one another.  E.g. one file 
can refer to the (full) node-id and path of another file.  (The reference 
also contains a collection of inputs required by the import.)  Normally, 
these files go into the repository and are not changed unless they have 
errors (essentially, the files contain geometric data used to automate 
machinery).  Changing a file can potentially change the inputs required by 
an import of the file (so I can't just automatically use the most recent 
revision).

When the software loads one of these files, it resolves the references to 
other files contained therein (i.e. hg cat with a particular node-id and 
path).  What I want to do is detect whether newer revisions of the file 
exist and issue an "outdated" error if there are.

However, there are semi-rare cases where a file is revised for reasons 
other than a bug fix (i.e. adding some newly needed feature).  What I was 
expecting is that I would simply do something like:

cp file temp
// ... edit temp ...
hg rm file
mv temp file
hg add file
hg ci -m "replaced file with new file"

Then given a node-id/path in a file, I could somehow track forward to 
detect new revisions, but that tracking forward would not pass the hg rm 
revision (because the file after that is a new different file).

Is this possible?

Regards,
Paul Mensonides