TortoiseHg and multiple branches in one repo

Question

I really can't figure it out. I'm new to Mercurial and TortoiseHg. Read alot of docs and still cant find answer. I know that one way of branching is making a copy. Thats clear but there is another way called "named branches" but this is one thing i can't understand.

For example i I have new repo first branch is called "default". Then i added 3 branches called "test1...3". Now in repo browser i have tree like this:

* test3
|
* test2
|
* test1
|
* default

how to achieve something like this:

* test 1 
|  _______* test 2
| | ______* test 3
| ||
|//
* default

How to after branching to "branch3" switch back to "default". After adding some things and commit and switch back to "branch3"?

Answer 1

If you need an advice in TortoiseHG specifically too - then you have to open repository explorer and choose "update" for the head of branch you are interested to switch to.

Answer 2

You should make a

hg update -C default

between each named branch creation.

Beware of the -C option, which also discards local changes, so be careful before using this command.