Is a workflow of hg clone on non-bare hg repositories safe?

Question

I know that git will refuse to push to a non-bare repository, but hg doesn't seem to... Does that mean that I do not need to worry about bareness when cloning with hg? I've experimented (in pastebin below), and I haven't seen any problems with this approach, but my inability to find problems is not the same as there being no problems. Also, I have autopush enabled in my .hgrc...

http://pastebin.com/qZyyqb6p

Answer 1

Mercurial does not auto-merge anything when you push, so pushing to a non-bare repository is completely safe. This is why Mercurial does not distinguish between bare and non-bare repositories - a bare repository is simply one where the working directory is at the null revision (i.e. before the initial commit).

If you are pushing a new head to an existing branch Mercurial will require you to specify hg push -f. This is because having multiple heads on the same branch imposes additional complications for other developers and could potentially result in the heads being merged in different ways, leading to a cascade of unnecessary merges.

The workflow you should generally follow is pull; merge your new heads to the existing head; push. Of course, this also depends heavily on the branching strategy you are using - one which uses bookmarks (equivalent to git branches) or anonymous branching for tasks will often end up with multiple heads on the same named branch, whereas one using named branches for tasks tend not to.