view mercurial/help/multirevs.txt @ 12727:52971985be14

backout: provide linear backout as a default (without --merge option)

This changes backouts changeset to retain linear history, .e. it is committed
as a child of the working directory parent, not the reverted changeset
parent.

The default behavior was previously to just commit a reverted change as a
child of the backed out changeset - thus creating a new head. Most of
the time, you would use the --merge option, as it does not make sense to
keep this dangling head as is.
The previous behavior could be obtained by using 'hg update --clean .' after a
'hg backout --merge'.

The --merge option itself is not affected by this change. There is also
still an autocommit of the backout if a merge is not needed, i.e. in case
the backout is the parent of the working directory.

Previously we had (pwd = parent of the working directory):
                  pwd     older
backout           auto    merge
backout --merge   auto    commit

With the new linear approach:
                  pwd     older
backout           auto    commit
backout --merge   auto    commit

auto: commit done by the backout command
merge: backout also already committed but explicit merge and commit needed
commit: user need to commit the update/merge

When Mercurial accepts more than one revision, they may be specified
individually, or provided as a topologically continuous range,
separated by the ":" character.

The syntax of range notation is [BEGIN]:[END], where BEGIN and END are
revision identifiers. Both BEGIN and END are optional. If BEGIN is not
specified, it defaults to revision number 0. If END is not specified,
it defaults to the tip. The range ":" thus means "all revisions".

If BEGIN is greater than END, revisions are treated in reverse order.

A range acts as a closed interval. This means that a range of 3:5
gives 3, 4 and 5. Similarly, a range of 9:6 gives 9, 8, 7, and 6.