[Python-Dev] Mercurial migration: progress report (PEP 385)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

P.J. Eby writes:

 > Wouldn't the simple thing to do in Mercurial, just be to use 
 > different repositories for long-lived branches?  I mean, if you're 
 > not merging them that much anyway, what's the point?

I basically agree with that, and so does Dirkjan, I think.  I'm not
sure why he brought up the idea of using named branches.

 > Isn't it just as easy to pull from another repository, as from
 > another branch within that repository?

Not if the other repository is remote and offline, and pulling from a
remote does take more time, as do things like diffs against that
branch.  The temptation is to leave the remote repos on the public
host, rather than put in the effort to make sure your local clones are
up to date.  If you do, there are minor annoyances like that.  So
people who actually work on more than one line of development learn
pretty soon to keep a local clone for each repo they're interested
in.  Problem solved, IMO, but some people worry about the extra space
taken up.