view docs/evolve-good-practice.rst @ 930:cac35bef8aee stable

import: --obsolete flag for automatic obsolescence marker creation

A new `--obsolete` flag is added to import. When present, the new node will be
marked as a successors of the one specified in the `Node` field of the imported
patch. No marker are created when revision have the node expected in the patch.

This improves email based work flow where implicit rebase are likely to happen
and extra information are lost, changing the hash.

This new behavior requires a flags, otherwise the `hg export x | hg import -`
idiom would change, turning the source obsolete.
(Changing from `hg graft x` to `hg rebase --dest . --rev x`)

This change only takes effect when using Mercurial 3.0 and above

.. Copyright 2011 Pierre-Yves David <[e-mail]>
..                Logilab SA        <[e-mail]>

-----------------------------------------
Good practice for (early) users of evolve
-----------------------------------------

Avoid unstability
--------------------------------

The less unstability you have the less you need to resolve.

Evolve is not yet able to detect and solve every situation. And your mind is
not ready neither.

Branch as much as possible
--------------------------------

This is not MQ; you are not constrained to linear history.

Making a branch per independent branch will help you avoid unstability
and conflict.

Rewrite your changes only
------------------------------------------------

There is no descent conflict detection and handling right now.
Rewriting other people's changesets guarantees that you will get
conflicts. Communicate with your fellow developers before trying to
touch other people's work (which is a good pratice in any case).

Using multiple branches will help you to achieve this goal.

Prefer pushing unstability to touching other people changesets
--------------------------------------------------------------


If you have children changesets from other people that you don't really care
about, prefer not altering them to risking a conflict by stabilizing them.


Do not get too confident
---------------------------

This is an experimental extension and a complex concept. This is beautiful,
powerful and robust on paper, but the tool and your mind may not be prepared for
all situations yet.