I am currently using TortoiseHg Mercurial and accidentally committed an incorrect commit message How do I go about editing this commit message in the repository

EDIT As pointed out by users don t use MQ use commit --amend This answer is mostly of historic interest now As others have mentioned the MQ extension is much more suited for this task and you don t run the risk of destroying your work To do this Enable the MQ extension by adding something like this to your hgrc extensions mq Update to the changeset you want to edit typically tip hg up rev Import the current changeset into the queue hg qimport -r Refresh the patch and edit the commit message hg qrefresh -e Finish all applied patches one in this case and store them as regular changesets hg qfinish -a I m not familiar with TortoiseHg but the commands should be similar to those above I also believe it s worth mentioning that editing history is risky you should only do it if you re absolutely certain that the changeset hasn t been pushed to or pulled from anywhere else

Last operation was the commit in question To change the commit message of the last commit when the last mercurial operation was a commit you can use hg rollback to roll back the last commit and re-commit it with the new message hg ci -m new message But be careful because the rollback command also rolls back following operations import pull push with this repository as the destination unbundle see hg help rollback Thus if you are not sure if the last mercurial command was a hg ci don t use hg rollback Change any other commit message You can use the mq extension which is distributed with Mercurial to change the commit message of any commit This approach is only useful when there aren t already cloned repositories in the public that contain the changeset you want to rename because doing so alters the changeset hash of it and all following changesets That means that you have to be able to remove all existing clones that include the changeset you want to rename or else pushing pulling between them wouldn t work To use the mq extension you have to explicitly enable it e g under UNIX check your hgrc which should contain following lines extensions mq Say that you want to change revision X - first qimport imports revisions X and following Now they are registered as a stack of applied patches Popping qpop the complete stack except X makes X available for changes via qrefresh After the commit message is changed you have to push all patches again qpop to re-apply them i e to recreate the following revisions The stack of patches isn t needed any thus it can be removed via qfinish Following demo script shows all operations in action In the example the commit message of third changeset is renamed test sh cd dirname 0 set -x -e -u echo INFO Delete old stuff rm -rf hg seq 5 echo INFO Setup repository with 5 revisions hg init echo ui gt hg hgrc echo username Joe User lt juser example org gt gt gt hg hgrc echo style compact gt gt hg hgrc echo extensions gt gt hg hgrc echo mq gt gt hg hgrc for i in seq 5 do touch i amp amp hg add i amp amp hg ci -m changeset message i i done hg log echo INFO Need to rename the commit message on the 3rd revision echo INFO Displays all patches hg qseries echo INFO Import all revisions including the 3rd to the last one as patches hg qimport -r hg identify -n -r children 2 tip hg qseries echo INFO Pop patches hg qpop -a hg qseries hg log hg parent hg commit --amend -m CHANGED MESSAGE hg log echo INFO Push all remaining patches hg qpush -a hg log hg qseries echo INFO Remove all patches hg qfinish -a hg qseries amp amp hg log amp amp hg parent Copy it to an empty directory an execute it e g via bash test sh 2 gt amp 1 tee log The output should include the original changeset message hg log 2 53bc13f21b04 2011-08-31 17 26 0200 juser changeset message 3 And the rename operation the changed message hg log 2 3ff8a832d057 2011-08-31 17 26 0200 juser CHANGED MESSAGE Tested with Mercurial 4 5 2

Well I used to do this way Imagine you have 500 commits and your erroneous commit message is in r 498 hg qimport -r 498 tip hg qpop -a joe hg patches 498 diff change the comment after the mercurial header hg qpush -a hg qdelete -r qbase qtip

I did it this way Firstly don t push your changes or you are out of luck Grab and install the collapse extension Commit another dummy changeset Then use collapse to combine the previous two changesets into one It will prompt you for a new commit message giving you the messages that you already have as a starting point You have effectively changed your original commit message

A little gem in the discussion above - thanks to Codest and Kevin Pullin In TortoiseHg there s a dropdown option adjacent to the commit button Selecting Amend current revision brings back the comment and the list of files SO useful

In TortoiseHg right-click on the revision you want to modify Choose Modify History- Import MQ That will convert all the revisions up to and including the selected revision from Mercurial changesets into Mercurial Queue patches Select the Patch you want to modify the message for and it should automatically change the screen to the MQ editor Edit the message which is in the middle of the screen then click QRefresh Finally right click on the patch and choose Modify History- Finish Patch which will convert it from a patch back into a change set Oh this assumes that MQ is an active extension for TortoiseHG on this repository If not you should be able to click File- Settings click Extensions and click the mq checkbox It should warn you that you have to close TortoiseHg before the extension is active so close and reopen

There is another approach with the MQ extension and the debug commands This is a general way to modify history without losing data Let me assume the same situation as Antonio set current tip to rev 497 hg debugsetparents 497 hg debugrebuildstate hg add remove if needed hg commit hg strip -n 498

Good news hg 2 2 just added git like --amend option and in tortoiseHg you can use Amend current revision by select black arrow on the right of commit button

I know this is an old post and you marked the question as answered I was looking for the same thing recently and I found the histedit extension very useful The process is explained here http knowledgestockpile blogspot com 2010 12 changing-commit-message-of-revision-in html

[version-control] How to edit incorrect commit message in Mercurial?

Update: Mercurial has added --amend which should be the preferred option now.

You can rollback the last commit (but only the last one) with hg rollback and then reapply it.

Important: this permanently removes the latest commit (or pull). So if you've done a hg update that commit is no longer in your working directory then it's gone forever. So make a copy first.

Other than that, you cannot change the repository's history (including commit messages), because everything in there is check-summed. The only thing you could do is prune the history after a given changeset, and then recreate it accordingly.

None of this will work if you have already published your changes (unless you can get hold of all copies), and you also cannot "rewrite history" that include GPG-signed commits (by other people).

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