Strategies for push/merge problem?

[Peter Arrenbrecht]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 10:00 PM, Risto Kankkunen
<risto.kankkunen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > However, I'm wondering couldn't you use branches in Mercurial for the same
>> > thing: develop, commit and push your changes to a separate branch until they
>> > are stable enough and pass the test suite before merging into the mainline.
>>
>> Isn't it simpler to use a separate repo until the tests pass? Which is what
>> people are already doing when they don't push until the feature is done.
>
> The situation I'm referring to is when people want to record for posterity the
> steps they took to implement a feature instead of the zeus athena alternative.
> Consider Benjamin Smedberg's partially automatic refactoring case for example.
>
> It is much harder to find a separate repo afterwards when I'm trying to figure
> out why a certain feature was introduced into the mainline in its current form.

One could add the detailed history as a bundle file to the main repo,
along with the actual Athena-style patches. Then people wanting to dig
in can unbundle into a spare clone to inspect the patch's evolution.

-parren