Bookmarks usage survey

[Bob Hood]

On 4/4/2014 6:39 PM, Stephen Lee wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I would like to get a feel for how many people are using bookmarks,
> and how they use them.
>
> 1) Do you use bookmarks? How do you use them/what does your workflow look like?

Personally, no.

> 3) If you don't use them, is there something preventing you? What do
> you use for feature branches instead?

Bookmarks seem too fluid for our software release mechanics.

We use a pretty traditional approach to software releases, using named
branches so we can have multiple, active, and compartmentalized branches of
development occurring at the same time.  We then branch off of those branches
to stabilize for release, and then freeze those sub-branches (using a
Mercurial hook I wrote) once release is made to prevent any further changes. 
This gives us a snapshot of the version of the release for testing purposes,
and for making further patch releases of that branch, if necessary.

>From my limited understanding of the intention of bookmarks, named branches
seem less messy and easier to manage in multitasking releases.  Perhaps I
misunderstand them, but coming from other SCMs that don't have them, the named
branch approach is much more familiar as a paradigm, and so, far less
disruptive when switching from, say, Subversion to Mercurial.