stuck in commit/update/push/pull loop

[Steve Franks]

Can anyone look at the following and see what, precisely, I'm doing wrong?

I'm trying to migrate from bzr which has truly atrocious tool support
(ever seen how feature poor bzr qlog is?), but the explicit push/pull
(vs. it being wrapped in commit/update) is rather hampering adoption.
I'm generally a fan of explicit actions, but I'm starting to get the
impression hg's achilles heel is located therein (whereas bzr was
overly fond of trashing my local repository and forcing a clean
clone).

Perhaps the issue is commit won't act on deleted items without some
switch being specified?

fwiw: hg --version: 1.6.3

Thanks,
Steve

steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg push
pushing to ssh://192.168.0.2//raincloud/hg/zonge/manufacturing
searching for changes
abort: push creates new remote heads on branch 'default'!
(you should pull and merge or use push -f to force)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg pull
pulling from ssh://192.168.0.2//raincloud/hg/zonge/manufacturing
searching for changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 1 changesets with 5 changes to 5 files (+1 heads)
(run 'hg heads' to see heads, 'hg merge' to merge)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg merge
abort: outstanding uncommitted changes (use 'hg status' to list changes)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg commit -m"WTF"
nothing changed
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg update
abort: crosses branches (use 'hg merge' to merge or use 'hg update -C'
to discard changes)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg merge
abort: outstanding uncommitted changes (use 'hg status' to list changes)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg status
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6Bom.xls
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6BottomPlace.pdf
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6Brd335.zip
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6PnP.xls
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6PnPBottom.prn
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6PnPTop.prn
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6Sch.pdf
! 335_ZenHub6/Z3Hub6TopPlace.pdf
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.G1
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.G2
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GBL
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GBO
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GBP
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GBS
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GM1
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GM2
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GTL
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GTO
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GTP
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335.GTS
? 335_ZenHub6/Bd335Drill.TXT
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg commit -m"rm
obsolete items"
nothing changed
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg pull -u
pulling from ssh://192.168.0.2//raincloud/hg/zonge/manufacturing
searching for changes
no changes found
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg pull
pulling from ssh://192.168.0.2//raincloud/hg/zonge/manufacturing
searching for changes
no changes found
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg update
abort: crosses branches (use 'hg merge' to merge or use 'hg update -C'
to discard changes)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg merge
abort: outstanding uncommitted changes (use 'hg status' to list changes)
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$ hg commit
nothing changed
steve at wynde:~/projects/clients/zonge/manufacturing$