Mercurial - close default branch and replace with a named branch as new default

Question

In a mercurial repo, the \"default\" branch has fallen very out of date to the point where it no longer makes sense to merge in the changes from \"develop\", a named branch whic

Answer 1

If default has diverged somewhat from develop and you want default to be exactly the same as develop after the merge, you need a slightly different set of commands from what Edward gave you (this will also work where develop is a direct descendant of default).

hg update -C default
hg -y merge --tool internal:fail develop
hg revert --all --no-backup -r develop
hg resolve --all --mark
hg commit -m "merge updating default to current develop"

This means that any conflicts will result in an unresolved merge. You then revert everything to be the same as on the develop branch (with no backup so you don't get lots of .orig files left over).