Bookmarks with hg update question

[Becker, Mischa J]

From: Mercurial [mailto:mercurial-bounces at mercurial-scm.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Fischer
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2016 10:48 AM
To: mercurial at mercurial-scm.org
Subject: Fwd: Bookmarks with hg update question

Actually responding to the list this time:

James,

We use a similar workflow to the one you outlined in your message. And I have run into the same problem you describe below:


> The Problem / Question:
>
> Let's say a developer does the following:
>
> hg up current
>
> (does some other stuff)
>
> hg up
>
> What happens is, the bookmark travels to "tip".
>
> I'm not sure this is right, or expected behavior, but perhaps we are doing something wrong?

This is expected behavior. The documentation for 'hg update' states:
 " hg update - Update the repository's working directory to the specified changeset. If no changeset is specified, update to the tip of the current named branch and move the active bookmark (see 'hg help bookmarks')."

So a bare 'hg update' will end up moving your active bookmark to the tip.


> <snip>
>
> Anyway, to summarize:
>
> 1. Is there a setting or something else that already exists that will prevent this behavior when doing hg up from a bookmark?
> 2. If not, is this a known problem / is this a problem at all?
> 3. Are we just abusing bookmarks in a way they weren't intended to be used?
>

Our solution is to simply "never allow a bare 'hg update' command to be called". As long as the user has to specify a revision argument to 'hg update' it won't move your bookmark unexpectedly.

So you always have to "hg update mybookmark" or "hg update current" or "hg update tip" (if it's the tip you really want). That has effectively stopped any issues for us.

Now since everyone works on the command line here that rule is pretty easy to enforce using a .bashrc setting that blocks 'hg update' without an argument. I see that you mention using tortoiseHg and so I'm afraid I don't know how that would be done with tortoise.

Another option is to make use of revsets “x~n” to tell hg update to use the revision the bookmark is on instead of updating to the bookmark itself. This will prevent it from activating the bookmark.

> hg up current~0

In Tortoise Hg, when updating to a revision that has a bookmark, you have to either change the Update To field from the bookmark to the actual revision number or remember to deactivate the bookmark afterwards.  (It would be nice if the Activate Bookmarks setting applied to Update but I’ve never asked for it.)

Mischa Becker

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