Merging Mercurial branches from separate repositories

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to merge branches from a separate repo into the current.

I have the following:

PJT1 - contains branches default and foodog

PJT2 - contains branch default

from PJT2, I do the following:

$ hg fetch -y ../PJT1 -r foodog -m "this is a test"

Now, if I look in PJT2, I see the correct files and changes. However, I if I do hg branches, I get the following:

[someone@myhome pjt2]$ hg branches
foodog                         1:c1e14fde816b
default                        0:7b1adb938f71 (inactive)

and hg branch reveals the following:

[someone@myhome pjt2]$ hg branch
foodog

How do I get the contents from PJT1's foodog branch into PJT2's default branch?

Solution

You need to merge, but keep in mind changes on branch foodog will always be on foodog -- branches never go away but they can be hidden. This sequence of commands is as close as you'll get to what you're asking:

cd PJT2
hg update default # just in case you were somewhere else
hg pull ../PJT1 -r foodog  # that gets you foodog
hg merge foodog  # that merges the changes into default
hg commit # commit the merge
hg update foodog # go to the most recent change in foodog (note: it is not a 'head')
hg commit --close-branch

After the merge hg branches will still show foodog unless you do hg branches --active which only shows branches that have heads on them. After the commit --close-branch you won't see foodog unless you do hg branches --closed.

It's because branches in Mercurial never go away entirely (a design feature) that they're often reserved only for life-long things like release-1.0 or stable. For short-lived efforts like bugs and features consider using bookmarks instead. Here's a great comparison of the two: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in-mercurial