How to prevent a file from automatically merging when switching branches in Mercurial?

Question

Let's say I have two branches named default and newfeature. I have a file called readme.txt in both branches. I'm working on the newfeature branch and I make a change to readme.txt. If I run hg up default without committing the change, Mercurial automatically merges the version of readme.txt in newfeature directly into default.

How can I change this behavior? What I'm worried about is developers forgetting to commit before they switch branches, thus merging whatever they've been working on.

This is what the process looks like:

C:\source\BranchTest\Main>hg branch
Exams

C:\source\BranchTest\Main>hg status
M readme.txt

C:\source\BranchTest\Main>hg up default
merging readme.txt
0 files updated, 1 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

C:\source\BranchTest\Main>

Notice the automatic merge because I didn't commit the change to readme.txt. Mercurial doesn't warn me that this will happen.

Any suggestions?

At the very least this make me realize merging was occurring because I had uncommitted changes. Thanks. — Sophie McCarrell, Jan 30 '14 at 18:20

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '10 at 19:48

5

Use hg up -c (lower-case 'c'). This will check your working directory before updating.

You can make this the default in your hgrc file.

answered Aug 04 '10 at 19:48

Borealid

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4

But beware of the very similar `hg up -C` which will discard any changes you made to your working directory. – Niall C. Aug 04 '10 at 20:00
So darned deceptively simple. Thanks! – Robert S. Aug 05 '10 at 03:49
1

In that case stick to `hg update --check` and `hg update --clean` to remove ambiguity. – Adam Houldsworth May 25 '12 at 13:56

How to prevent a file from automatically merging when switching branches in Mercurial?

1 Answers1