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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T12:29:36+00:00

I’m a Subversion user, and I think I’ve got my head mostly around it

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I’m a Subversion user, and I think I’ve got my head mostly around it all now. So of course now we’re thinking of switching to Mercurial, and I need to start again.

In our single repository, we have the typical branches, tags, trunk layout. When I want to create a feature branch I:

  • Use the repo browser to copy trunk to branches/Features/[FeatureName].
  • Checkout a new working copy from branches/Features/[FeatureName].
  • Start working on it.
  • Occasionally commit, merge trunk in, resolve conflicts and commit.
  • When complete, one more merge of trunk, then “Reintegrate” the feature branch into trunk.

(Please note this process is simplified as it doesn’t take into account release candidate branches etc).

So I have questions about how I’d fulfil the same requirements (i.e. feature branches rather than working on trunk) in Mercurial:

  • In Mercurial, is a branch still within the repository, or is it a whole new local repository?
  • If we each have a copy of the whole repository, does that mean we all have copies of each other’s various feature branches (that’s a lot of data transfer)?
  • I know Mercurial is a DCVS, but does that mean we push/pull changes from each other directly, rather than via a peer repository on a server?
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In Mercurial, is a branch still within
    the repository, or is it a whole new
    local repository?

    The equivalent of the subversion way of working would be a repository with multiple heads in mercurial. However, this is not the idiomatic way of doing things. Typically you will have only one head in a given repository, so separate repositories for each branch.

    If we each have a copy of the whole
    repository, does that mean we all have
    copies of each other’s various feature
    branches (that’s a lot of data
    transfer)?

    Yes, if you look at the history of the head of your local repository, then you’ll be able to see all the feature branches that were merged in. But mercurial repositories are remarkably space efficient. For example, I have done a hg clone https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg to get the source for mercurial itself, and it is only 34.3 MB on an NTFS file system (compared to the source code download, which is 1.8 MB). Mercurial will also make use of hardlinks if your file system supports it, so there is little overhead if you clone a repository to another location on the same disk.

    I know Mercurial is a DCVS, but does
    that mean we push/pull changes from
    each other directly, rather than via a
    peer repository on a server?

    One way of working is indeed to have each developer expose a public repository in which he pushes his own changes. All other developers can then pull what they want.

    However, typically you’ll have one or more “blessed” repositories where all the changes are integrated. All developers then only need to pull from the blessed repository. Even if you didn’t explicitly have such a blessed repository I imagine people would automatically organize themselves like that, e.g. by all pulling from a lead developer.

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