Mercurial: The Definitive Guide

Branch Names and Merging

As you’ve probably noticed, merges in Mercurial are not symmetrical. Let’s say our repository has two heads, 17 and 23. If I hg update to 17 and then hg merge with 23, Mercurial records 17 as the first parent of the merge, and 23 as the second. Whereas if I hg update to 23 and then hg merge with 17, it records 23 as the first parent, and 17 as the second.

This affects Mercurial’s choice of branch name when you merge. After a merge, Mercurial will retain the branch name of the first parent when you commit the result of the merge. If your first parent’s branch name is foo, and you merge with bar, the branch name will still be foo after you merge.

It’s not unusual for a repository to contain multiple heads, each with the same branch name. Let’s say I’m working on the foo branch, and so are you. We commit different changes; I pull your changes; I now have two heads, each claiming to be on the foo branch. The result of a merge will be a single head on the foo branch, as you might hope.

But if I’m working on the bar branch, and I merge work from the foo branch, the result will remain on the bar branch.

$ hg branch
bar
$ hg merge foo
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
(branch merge, don't forget to commit)
$ hg commit -m 'Merge'
$ hg tip
changeset:   4:00d606298226
branch:      bar
tag:         tip
parent:      2:f32855c6764f
parent:      3:2e55e6a73143
user:        Bryan O'Sullivan <[e-mail]>
date:        Tue May 05 06:44:26 2009 +0000
summary:     Merge

To give a ...