What is a branch?

[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 10.02.2008 16:25, Douglas Philips wrote:
> On 2008 Feb 10, at 9:07 AM, Adrian Buehlmann indited:
>> by introducing the term "diverging development line", which I found  
>> on TutorialMerge.
> 
> I like that phrase.

:-)

> Since I'm not a mercurial expert, I wasn't going to edit the page  
> directly, but this section gave me pause:

Well. I'm not a Mercurial expert. Just edit that page! It's a wiki. Or leave a comment at 
http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/Branch/Discussion.

> 	Mercurial supports giving names to branches, by using the branch  
> name property of the changeset (see NamedBranches). If no branch name  
> is specified when committing a new changeset, Mercurial assigns the  
> branch name "default". So the name of the default branch in a  
> repository is "default" (which, for example, is not displayed when  
> doing a hg log).
> 
> 
> When I read the NamedBranches page, it implies that naming a branch  
> makes the name 'sticky', but the text above implies that if I do a  
> "branch foo; <commit-1>; <commit-2>" then <commit-1> will be on the  
> foo branch, but <commit-2> will be on the default branch.

You're right. "hg branch" is sticky.

I've tried to clarify:
http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/Branch?action=diff&rev2=31&rev1=30

> 
> Otherwise, I really like the new page! Thanks!
> 

Thanks for your comment!