I\'m using Mercurial locally for a project (it\'s the only repo there\'s no pushing/pulling to/from anywhere else).
To date it\'s got a linear history. However, the
IMHO, hg strip -r 39 suits this case better.
It requires the mq extension to be enabled and has the same limitations as the "cloning repo method" recommended by Martin Geisler: If the changeset was somehow published, it will (probably) return to your repo at some point in time because you only changed your local repo.