hg: how do I push newly created branch back into central repository?

Question

I cloned the centeral repository via

hg clone my_project my_project_1

then after switching to a newly created repo I marked as a new branch

hg branch v1

While inside the new clone I issued

hg ci -m "branch created"

but when I tried to push the changes back to the original repository I cloned from I got this error:

abort: push creates new remote branches: v1!

How do I push the branch into the original repository? Am I doing the right thing by trying to push the branch into the original repo? I just want to have a centralized repository which would contain branches and from which I would be able to check out branches. What's the best way to deal with this problem? Thank you.

Solution

It depends on the version of Mercurial that you're using. The command used to be hg push -f ... or hg push --force ... to force the creation of a new branch in the remote repository (which is usually OK).

However, using -f also allows you to create new heads in the remote repository (usually not OK), so current versions of Mercurial (1.6 and above) have a --new-branch option to hg push that allows you to create a branch, but not create a new head, so the command is:

hg push --new-branch

You can also limit pushes to just the branch that you're working on with the -b flag, so:

hg push --new-branch -b v1

Comments

[NoBugs]

It looks like unlike git, you have to create a commit to be able to push: hg ci -m "Creating a branch"

[John Slegers]

@NoBugs In the question, the OP said that they already did that.