Package: mercurial Version: 0.9.5-3 Severity: normal
The existing procedure for removing a dead branch is confusing and risks major damage to the main branch. As recommended in the mercurial web pages, you merge with the dead branch, then un-do the changes. This works, at least in uncomplicated cases but it has some drawbacks. 1) The merge can (and typically does) bring up a GUI tools with all kinds of complicated options and choices. The correct action is not at all obvious. What does one do with conflicts? Does it matter? 2)The risk is large because you are intentionally (though temporarily) messing up your best code, merely to get rid of an annoying obsolete branch. 3) Suppose you get interrupted in between the merge and the undo? This isn't a theoretical question. It happened to me: I was sitting there looking at the GUI merge and wondering what to do, when my phone went off and I just had to lock the screen and run. 4) It leads to a misleading graph of branches on hg view (and other misleading status information elsewhere). It *looks* as if you merged with the branch, but really, you took no information from it. Really, it has been dropped from consideration, but it looks like it was used. (This is not good practice.) So, I'd strongly suggest adding a special-purpose "hg drop" command that causes the named branch to be ignored (unless explicitly referenced). It should be reported as dropped in hg view and hg log. It should be a atomic operation with no options other than the selection of a branch to drop. Perhaps it would be good to have a "-m" option so you could enter a comment about *why* it was dropped. -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.22-3-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages mercurial depends on: ii libc6 2.7-6 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii python 2.4.4-6 An interactive high-level object-o ii python-support 0.7.6 automated rebuilding support for p Versions of packages mercurial recommends: ii meld 1.1.5.1-2 graphical tool to diff and merge f ii rcs 5.7-21 The GNU Revision Control System -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
