How to correctly close a feature branch in Mercurial?

Question

I've finished working on a feature branch feature-x. I want to merge results back to the default branch and close feature-x in order to get rid of it in the output of hg branches.

I came up with the following scenario, but it has some issues:

$ hg up default
$ hg merge feature-x
$ hg ci -m merge
$ hg up feature-x
$ hg ci -m 'Closed branch feature-x' --close-branch

So the feature-x branch (changests 40-41) is closed, but there is one new head, the closing branch changeset 44, that will be listed in hg heads every time:

$ hg log ...
o  44 Closed branch feature-x
|
| @  43 merge
|/|
| o  42 Changeset C
| |
o |  41 Changeset 2
| |
o |  40 Changeset 1
|/
o  39 Changeset B
|
o  38 Changeset A
|

Update: It appears that since version 1.5 Mercurial doesn't show heads of closed branches in the output of hg heads anymore.

Is it possible to close a merged branch without leaving one more head? Is there more correct way to close a feature branch?

Related questions:

Is there a downside to this Mercurial workflow: named branch "dead" head?

@Andrey: but the article pointed out does NOT only talk about "--close-branch". It shows four ways to prune your branch. If you really don't want it anymore, you can clone as explained in the article. The only 'problem' is if for whatever reason you want to close it, yet keep it around. — SyntaxT3rr0r
@WizardOfOdds Yes, I've read the whole article on pruning dead branches. I want the branch to stay in the revision history, not to throw it away. Previously I just merged feature branches into default without "closing" them. It resulted in 0 new heads but such branches were visible in hg branches forever (as inactive branches). — Andrey Vlasovskikh
To develop features I tend to clone the whole repository and then merge it back in once the feature is finished. I don't like to have the remains of (closed) branches in the history. — DanMan

Andrey Vlasovskikh Andrey Vlasovskikh · Accepted Answer · 2010-02-10T18:20:25

One way is to just leave merged feature branches open (and inactive):

$ hg up default
$ hg merge feature-x
$ hg ci -m merge

$ hg heads
    (1 head)

$ hg branches
default    43:...
feature-x  41:...
    (2 branches)

$ hg branches -a
default    43:...
    (1 branch)

Another way is to close a feature branch before merging using an extra commit:

$ hg up feature-x
$ hg ci -m 'Closed branch feature-x' --close-branch
$ hg up default
$ hg merge feature-x
$ hg ci -m merge

$ hg heads
    (1 head)

$ hg branches
default    43:...
    (1 branch)

The first one is simpler, but it leaves an open branch. The second one leaves no open heads/branches, but it requires one more auxiliary commit. One may combine the last actual commit to the feature branch with this extra commit using --close-branch, but one should know in advance which commit will be the last one.

Update: Since Mercurial 1.5 you can close the branch at any time so it will not appear in both hg branches and hg heads anymore. The only thing that could possibly annoy you is that technically the revision graph will still have one more revision without childen.

Update 2: Since Mercurial 1.8 bookmarks have become a core feature of Mercurial. Bookmarks are more convenient for branching than named branches. See also this question:

Mercurial branching and bookmarks

How to correctly close a feature branch in Mercurial?

4 Answers