Remove file from a commit in Mercurial

Question

I have a commit onto which I have amended some files. Some of these files that were part of the amend I do not want in this commit. Is there a way in Mercurial to remove certain files from the commit without losing the changes I have made to them? Thank you.

Steps:

1. Made some changes
2. hg commit -m
3. Made some more changes (some of these file accidentally amended)
4. hg amend

Answer 1

Try out:

hg forget somefile.txt hg commit --amend 

If the file was new (i.e. you had used hg add).

If that file already existed try:

cp somefile.txt somefile.txt.bak hg revert somefile.txt --rev .~1 hg commit --amend 

Which is basically telling mercurial to revert the file (somefile.txt) back to the state it was one revision ago (--rev .~1).

Just make sure to back up the file you are reverting before entering the command so that you do not lose your changes. I was under the impression mercurial does this automatically for you, but after testing it quickly I'm not so sure.