Mercurial, Branch each project in a solution?

Question

Currently, we're using Mercurial as our VCS on BitBucket.

The way the project is right now, is a solution with all the code checked in with all the developers working on the "default" branch. Every morning, we create a build release and the QA have it.

I'm wondering whether it makes more sense to branch each dev on his own since each dev is working on a project in the solution.

The other main point is how would this affect the QAs? Would they need to merge all the branches prior to building?

I'm really confused about this.

Answer 1

As mentioned in "When should you make a branch", you use branching to isolate a development effort.
In your case, you would isolate each project in the solution on which you are working.
That would allows for:

• intermediate commits, project per project
• QA testing for each project

But that would also require a merge in a common branch for all the project to be tested together as a solution.

See HgInit (from Joel Spolsky) for more on that kind of collaboration workflow.

In "Repository Architecture", Joel illustrates two development effort isolated in two different teams, but still including a synchronization (merge) effort at the end.