[slime-devel] Re: Mercurial

[David Brown]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 05:26:57PM -0800, Steve Morin wrote:

>I have done to a couple presentations on Mecurial but If people are working
>on a common project  I am not sure there is a usual need to create your own
>branch.  If I am doing work I am not sharing with others I get my own copy
>or setup my own repository.  Otherwise I am usually commiting to the main
>project, and work the with project maintainer for a branch if it's a serious
>effort that needs that or else you for the project if you can't see eye to
>eye with the "establishment"

I create top branches for many changes.  One workflow that works well:

   - I create a topic branch and work on a change
   - I generate a patch and email it around for feedback.
   - I make some changes and amend the branch (which I can only do on a
     private branch, before I merge it in).
   - I might fix up earlier parts of my patch.
   - Once all are satisfied, I push a nice clean change through.

Once email gets involved and waiting for feedback, you either work on one
change at a time, and spend most of your time waiting, or you use topic
branches.  What seems to happen with non-distributed/lightweight-branch
systems is that the history ends up filled with half-baked changes that
don't really have a coherency.

But, with a distributed system, you always get at least one branch, since
your workspace is a branch.

David