Question

I started doing some changes in a mercurial repository, without commiting them.

After 15 changed files, I’ve realized the changes could be a branch.

In this scenario, which would be the best way to create a branch? If I just create a new branch and move to it, could I just commit my files?

Answer 1

If you’ve modified but not committed changes you need only do:

hg branch branch_name_you_want

all the hg branch command does is say what branch the next commit should be on. You’ve not yet committed, so just hg branch and you’re good.

As an example if you did this:

... changes ...
hg branch misspelled
hg branch correctly_spelled
hg commit

you’d have a branch called correctly_spelled and no record whatsoever of misspelled.