dummy merge (two branches) for dummies

[Uwe Brauer]

   > On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:

   > I think I'm missing something here. Why do you want a dummy merge
   > (rather than a normal merge) at all? Why are you regularly merging
   > with a co-author but throwing away his changes? (Or is it *your*
   > changes you are throwing away?)

The workflow is like this:

The principial file is main.tex which lives on two branches, mine and
the coauthors one.

I edit main.tex, commit in my branch. Then I send that file to him, (he
gave up using mercurial for the moment.)

So I start working on other files, I create and delete on my branch. At
some point the file main.tex file arrives, now with his changes in. (I
say arrive, since he does not use hg anymore there is no push or pull or
sending of patches).

I check this file into *his* branch. Now I want to merge unconditionally
his changes, of that file, into my branch, but of course I don't want my
new or changed files to be touched by that merge.


   > Are there going to be some files that you do actually want to merge,
   > and others that you want to choose just one side or the other? If so,
   > you might be better off running the merge as usual, but then reverting
   > *just the files that ought to be reverted* back to one branch or the
   > other. You could do this using "hg revert -r <branchname> <file1>
   > <file2...>" before committing the merge.

Ok that is another possibility I have not thought off. But say if I have
10 files, I want to keep 9 files and merge 1, that solutions looks a bit
cumbersome?