how to view previous version of a file in Mercurial
I am using mercurial for version control of a few files in a directory. Suppose I have 10 commits (10 changesets or revisions). I want to just view how a particular file, say thisFile.py, looked in its 7th revision. I don't want to revert back to this older version. I don't want to go and make any changes or fix any bugs in this previous version. I simply want to see it, without affecting the latest version of the file or the mercurial history in any way. Is there a simple way to do it?
Use the hg cat command with the -r (revision) argument.
hg cat path_to/myfile.cpp -r 46
where 46 is the revision number (use hg log to see revision history)
hg cat [OPTION]... FILE...
Print the specified files as they were at the given revision.
If no revision is given, the parent of the working directory is used,
or tip if no revision is checked out.
Output may be to a file, in which case the name of the file is given
using a format string. The formatting rules are the same as for the
export command, with the following additions:
%s: basename of file being printed
%d: dirname of file being printed, or '.' if in repository root
%p: root-relative path name of file being printed
Returns 0 on success.
options:
-o, --output print output to file with formatted name
-r, --rev print the given revision
--decode apply any matching decode filter
-I, --include include names matching the given patterns
-X, --exclude exclude names matching the given patterns
To extract a specific revision of a specific file you can do this in Windows:
hg cat "<FileToBeExtractedPath>" -r 9 > "<ExtractionPath>"
Here, 9 is the revision number.
Or even better:
hg cat "<FileToBeExtractedPath>" -r 9 -o "<ExtractionPath>"