Mercurial: copying ONE file and its history to another repository

Question

I'm wondering if I can copy one file and its history from one repository to another, without having to import the whole other repository.

Answer 1

You can use the ConvertExtension to export just that one file from the first repository into a new temporary repository, then use hg pull -f to import the new repository into the target repository.

Create a filemap for the ConvertExtension with the single line:

include path/to/file 

Then use:

hg convert path/to/original path/to/temporary --filemap filemap 

to create the temporary repository. Next, in the target repository, do:

hg pull -f path/to/temporary 

to pull in that file with its history. This will create a new head, so use hg merge to merge it with the head in your target repository.