hg merge: -f didn't force

[Matt Mackall]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 12:12:31AM +0100, Sanjoy Mahajan wrote:
> > You cannot make octopus merges, one rev can only have at most 2 parents.
> 
> Good point.  Maybe 'hg merge -f' should fail saying something along
> those lines, since it's a [the only?] case where -f cannot force.
> 
> Do others wish for octupus merge?  In this case I did, but I should
> probably use mq for it anyway.  Also out of laziness, however, I
> haven't learnt it.

Octopus merges lose history, namely the real merge order and its
intermediate results. While it's hard to pick, I think this may be the
single worst misfeature in Git.
 
> I have a few local fixes and other modifications to the upstream
> release (the ConTeXt variant of TeX).  Each fix is a child of the
> first import (changeset 0).  When I do another import, which is every
> week or so (the ConTeXt developers take 'release often' to heart), I
> want to include the local fixes on top of the new release.  So I check
> out the last import, unzip the new distribution, commit it, and then
> merge and commit the fixes one at a time.  To avoid doing the
> intermediate commits is why I tried the octupus merge.
> 
> Is that what mq is made for?

Yes.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.