As a user of TortoiseHG, I have been wondering how the thg drag_move command works which mimics (or implements) the functionality behind the "HG Move versioned item(s) here..." context menu entry.
The help entry obtained via thg -v help drag_move gives:
thg drag_move SOURCE... DEST
move the selected files to the desired directory
As far as I understand, it must execute the following sequence (or similar) under the hood:
hg forget SOURCE
mv SOURCE DEST
hg add DEST
But if I do that manually (outside of TortoiseHG), it (naturally) doesn't associate DEST with SOURCE, it rather treats them as individual, unrelated changes.
If I use the GUI or the thg drag_move command, it keeps the history of these entries the same, at least within TortoiseHG I can still see SOURCE's history when I look at DEST's history after the move.
Is this a TortoiseHG extension to Mercurial or is there a hg option to achieve the same "natively"?
TLDR: You can use hg move OLD NEW to achieve the same functionality as thg drag_move.
Thg is using hg move under the hood when it's doing drag_move (see the run.py and quickop.py sources for details).
Hg move is the right way of renaming or moving a file in Mercurial because it's tracking the operation, as it says in his help message (hg help mv):
rename files; equivalent of copy + remove
Mark dest as copies of sources; mark sources for deletion. If dest is a
directory, copies are put in that directory. If dest is a file, there can
only be one source.