Using Mercurial to separate three versions: official/development/testing/

Question

Hello:

I'm working on deploying a Python module composed of several dozen files and folders; I use Mercurial for managing the software changes.

I want to keep the same module in three branches: the official one (which the team uses), the development one (this may be more than one development branch), and the testing branch (not the testing of the official branch, but a collection of test related to a third party module used by my module - regression testing when the third party module makes new releases).

How can I accomplish this in Mercurial? Simply name three branches in the same folder or cloning one version into three places an maintain them separately?

Any insight on how to manage this in general would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Answer 1

The "official" way would be cloning your repo in as many branch as you need.

But named branches within a repo is also acceptable, especially if you don't need to work simultaneously on different development efforts (each associated to their respective branch)

I find the "Guide to Branching Model in Mercurial" very instructive on this kind of choice.
Other information on Mercurial branches in this SO question as well.