CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mercurialtortoisehg
DOOManiac
DOOManiac

Reputation: 6284

HG: How to push some (but not all) changes to 'stable' branch?

Say I do my new feature development either in default, or an entirely new branch made just for the feature for a web site project. When it comes time to push the feature out to the live website, I want to move it to the live branch, which I then hg archive to my apache directory.

Throughout everything, I want to be absolutely sure not to push other, unrelated changes that are not yet ready to be published to the live branch.

  1. Is this even a good idea? Or should I be doing something entirely different?

  2. If the code is in default, how do I push only the one thing I need and not everything to live? If I push just the latest changeset, is it smart enough to send the latest version of those files, or will it only do the changesets?

  3. If the code is in an entirely new branch, do I merge the whole branch into live? How do I get those changes back to my default branch so I see them there too?

  4. I was reading the "Task Based Management" section of the Mercurial Kick Start guide and it mentions merging default into your branch. I found this very confusing and was wondering why you'd ever do this.

Thanks for any help you guys can provide.

[edit] I'm using TortoiseHG BTW [/edit]

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1492

Answers (1)

Eiver
Eiver

Reputation: 2635

HG now has Phases. Change a phase of a changeset to secret and it will not be pushed when you use push. You can do it using TortoiseHG GUI.

In addition to that, be aware that just pushing or pulling something does not automatically change any files in the working directory. It only makes some additional changesets available. Only by using update do you actually change any files in your working dir. (unless you configure hg to update automatically).

In the example you linked, there is a bug fix in the default branch. Bob wants to have this fix in his branch too, so he merges default branch with his branch. This is just an example to see how branching works. You do not have to use it in exactly the same way. If you just begin your Mercurial adventure, then you should better use just one branch until you have a good reason to use more.

For example: 3 developers work on the same project and all of them use just one branch (default). 1 of the developers wants to do a major refactoring of the code. He wants to commit several very unstable changesets (many "in the middle of work"). Doing so in the default branch might upset other developers. That is a good reason to create a branch. After his version is stable enough he will merge his branch into default. While he is doing development in his branch, he wants to be up-to-date with other developers, so he frequently merges default into his branch. Staying in a separate branch for too long might result in difficult merges. Luckily merging is very quick in HG, so merge often.

Upvotes: 3

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