Question

I’ve been using a lovely mercurial repo for a while now, but have recently realized that I really should have created the original repo one level higher in the file structure, as there are files up there that I also want to be version-controlled. Is there a way to “promote” a Mercurial repo up one level so that it also tracks files contained in that folder?

So, the current structure is:

-superFolder (not under VC)
    -someFolder (not under VC)
    -someFolder (repo root, under VC)
        -subFolder (under VC)

I want:

-superFolder (repo root, under VC)
    -someFolder (under VC)
    -someFolder (under VC)
        -subFolder (under VC)

I can always just create a new repo, but I’d like to retain my old deltas…

(bonus points if you know how to do it in MacHg, but command-line is also great)

Answer 1

If we imagine you created it like:

#!/bin/sh
mkdir superFolder     
cd superFolder 
mkdir someFolder1
touch someFolder1/file
hg init someFolder2
cd someFolder2
mkdir subFolder
touch subFolder/file
hg add subFolder/file
hg commit -m subFolder

 
hg status -A:

C subFolder/file

we can move it like:

mv ../someFolder1 . # Move the uncontrolled directory in
hg add someFolder1/ # Add uncontrolled directory
mkdir someFolder2 # Re-create *this* directory inside the root.
hg mv subFolder someFolder2 # Move sub-directory of old root to new subdirectory of root
hg commit -m 'Change repo level' # Commit

 
hg status -A:

C someFolder1/file
C someFolder2/subFolder/file 

 

cd ../..
mv superFolder superFolder_old # Move old unmanaged top-level out of way
mv superFolder_old/someFolder2 superFolder # Move root to new name
rmdir superFolder_old # Remove old top-level

As you can see, it requires some finagling. But this preserves history, unlike drharris’s solution, which rewrites every commit with a new id. It depends whether you actually care about the current commit ids (does anyone have them?). If not, his is easier.