[kwlug-disc] branches in mercurial -- as weird as they look?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i've just checked out my first mercurial project, and i'm looking at
the tags, heads and branches, and what i'm seeing just looks strange
for someone coming from a git/subversion background.

  for example:

$ hg branches
...
5.2.1-I20090930_0116         444:17ef437ef424
5.2.1-I20090923_0116         442:b75b6a474f67
5.2.1-I20090923_1820         436:f442987151fb
5.2.1-I20090911_0306         425:6db942a33954
5.2-20081231                 420:e42c0ee76845
5.2.1-I20090825_0305         415:8d2bdb6e199f
5.2.1-I20090814_0306         407:2f07536ee987
5.2.1-I20090811_0306         404:3ad6b20f7752
5.2.1-I20090728_0305         402:c69caa54d005
5.2.1-I20090709_1126         400:2fa73d118010
...

and so on.  but those aren't what i would normally interpret as
"branches."  i'm used to a branch being, well, an explicit deviation
from the trunk (or possibly another branch) for the general purpose of
working on an independent feature, with the thought that, for most
branches, you plan on some day merging back into the trunk (or the
original branch).

  the above looks more like what i'd call "tags" -- perhaps weekly.
am i just misinterpreting what i'm reading?  or are branches in
mercurial fundamentally different from what i'm used to?

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

        Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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