Trimming dead branches

[Eric Siegerman]

On 02/11/2015 04:41 PM, Becker, Mischa J wrote:
 > There are three main options for removing those 'failed' commits.
 >
 > 1. Use evolve to mark the dead branches as obsolete.  The commits 
aren't physically removed from the repo but are hidden and invisible by 
default.
 >
 > 2. Clone the existing repo to a new repo taking care to exclude the 
dead branches from the clone. When done, replace the existing repo with 
the clone.
 >
 > 3. Enable MQ and strip the 'failed' commits from the repo.  Do this 
on a copy of the repo to make sure you don't accidently break anything.  
Once the copy is fixed, replace the original repo. (In TortoiseHg, once 
MQ is enabled, you can right-click the bad commit and select Modify 
History -> Strip...)
 >

Another option is to close them.  What that does is to commit a new 
changeset that marks the branch as "closed", with these effects (among 
others?):
   - "hg heads" no longer lists it (unless you use the "-c/--closed" option)
   - If all of a named branch's heads are closed, it no longer shows up 
in Tortoise's list-of-branches dropdown (but you can change that by 
choosing "Display closed branches" from the "Branch" dropdown)
   - The "closing" changeset itself looks different in TortoiseHg

Like option (1) above, this doesn't remove the commit, but creates 
another one to fix up the problem.  (In this respect, I think it's what 
you were aiming for with "hg backout", but that wouldn't have done what 
you wanted.)

To close a branch:

   - From the shell:
       - hg checkout {one of the extra commits}
       - hg commit --close-branch

   - From TortoiseHg:
       - Update to one of the extra commits
       - Select the Working Directory (top line of the graph)
       - Click on the bold-faced "Branch: {branch's name}"
       - In the dialog, check "Close current branch", then "OK"
       - That fills in a default log message, but edit it if you want
       - Click "Commit"

Note that despite its name, "close branch" works just as well on 
anonymous heads as it does on actual named branches.

   - Eric