# HG changeset patch # User Greg Ward # Date 1429027265 14400 # Node ID 0683e30303168ea701b85a058e3891788ecb3819 # Parent 250835154f8f1a69cb7708e7adc6f0371abe640c docs: cover 'touch' command diff -r 250835154f8f -r 0683e3030316 docs/user-guide.rst --- a/docs/user-guide.rst Mon Apr 13 15:18:01 2015 -0400 +++ b/docs/user-guide.rst Tue Apr 14 12:01:05 2015 -0400 @@ -572,4 +572,30 @@ Example 11: Recover an obsolete changeset ========================================= -TODO +Sometimes you might obsolete a changeset, and then change your mind. You'll +probably start looking for an “unobsolete” command to restore a changeset +to normal state. For complicated implementation reasons, that command +doesn't exist. (If you have already pushed an obsolescence marker to +another repo, then Mercurial would need a way to revoke that remote +obsolesence marker. That's a hard problem.) + +Instead, ``evolve`` provides a ``touch`` command to resurrect an +obsolete changeset. An unexpected quirk: you almost certainly need to +use ``--hidden``, since obsolete changesets tend to be hidden, and you +can't reference a hidden changeset otherwise. Typical usage thus looks +like :: + + $ hg --hidden touch REV + +This creates a new, normal changeset which is the same as ``REV``—except +with a different changeset ID. The new changeset will have the same parent +as ``REV``, and will be a successor of ``REV``. + +The current implementation of ``hg touch`` is not ideal, and is likely to +change in the future. Consider the history in Figure 12, where revision 27 +is obsolete and the child of 26, also obsolete. If we ``hg touch 27``, that +creates a new revision which is a non-obsolete child of 26—i.e., it is +unstable. It's also *divergent*, another type of trouble that we'll learn +about in the `next section`_. + +.. _`next section`: sharing.html