0

I have to separate Mercurial repositories. One is the main trunk for the project, while the other is a branch with a set of additional changes.

There is one central location for the project repository, in which I'd like both the trunk and the branch to be available. What I'd like to do is merge the two repositories into a single one, but still allow the branch to be accessed via tags, or something similar. This would allow developers to check out the main code, but also be able to switch to working on the branch if it requires further changes. I also want to make sure that any code in the trunk doesn't accidentally make it into the branch. Any changes to the branch should be explicit and intentional.

What is the best way to accomplish this?

Paul W Homer
  • 2,728
  • 1
  • 19
  • 25

1 Answers1

1

As Brandon says, just push from the branch repo to the trunk, or pull the branch into the trunk.

You can then choose if you want to merge branch & trunk together, or keep them separate. If you push from branch to trunk, you may get a warning about multiple heads. Just do a push -f if you want to keep them separate. (pull may not give a warning)

You can merge the branch changes to the trunk and still be able to do further work on the branch later if you want. In general, I tag every release so I can easily get back to anything that went out the door.

When you created the branch, did you clone it to another directory? If so, it will be harder to find the branch after pulling it into the trunk repo. You may want to read up on bookmarks to label the branch. Also look at how multiple heads work.

Note: The other option is to use named branches which labels the branch permanently. You wouldn't need to do anything extra to switch over to it later.

David I.
  • 4,747
  • 3
  • 26
  • 34
  • Yes, I believe the branch was cloned, then later the trunk was also cloned, both as separate ops. I'm also fond of tags. The multiple heads page was what I was looking for (but unable to find :-) Thanks. – Paul W Homer Apr 05 '12 at 15:49
  • So what is better, bookmarks or named branches? (the docs make me suspect that bookmarks are built on branches?) – Paul W Homer Apr 05 '12 at 15:50
  • It depends on how you want to use them. I'm not an expert, but named branch names are permanent, and bookmarks are more fluid. They can be deleted. They are two independent methods of marking a branch of development within a repository. The other method is by cloning to a separate repo. – David I. May 03 '12 at 16:19