> Is there a good definitive guide somewhere on the best workflows for hg?

I don't know about workflows specifically, but there is a very good reference [0] about Mercurial's branching models. Maybe this will help you.

[0] https://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in-m...

Thanks for this. This is fairly old now though, and doesn't even mention bookmarks (which I understand to be like git branches, except they aren't (?) synched between repo copies. Then there's some new stuff that apparently are very good, but I can't find a proper description of how they work / should be used.

> This is fairly old now though, and doesn't even mention bookmarks.

What do you mean? It has a section on it:

https://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in-m...

(I have not audited to see how accurate the information is, though).

> Then there's some new stuff that apparently are very good, but I can't find a proper description of how they work / should be used.

Yes - I often wished that someone wrote and maintained an article listing all the extensions that one likely will want to use.[1] One you may want to look into is evolve.

[1] Maybe someone has written this - I haven't checked in the last few years.

Ah my bad, missed it, you’re right.

That's what I meant by outdated documentation.

I personally use bookmarks. They're simple to use. However, people have issues using them in a team setting (by default it doesn't sync the bookmarks when there's a push, I think). I have not explored topics - looking at Heptapod it seems they prefer topics, so it may be the way to go.

If you're the only developer, then bookmarks should do everything you want.

I'm reserving judgement on HG but the comments saying it just works and is so easy gives me a good chuckle were I've had to set up all sorts that's non-obvious. topics not branches? cool ok. command not found, right uh enable extension 'topics =' yep sure obvious ok, Huh wired error now. oh pip install hg-evolve has topics in it fine ok.

go add a remote to an existing repo. lovely ux there.

and now you're telling me about bookmarks, I've a docs page open to read about phases, that seems kinda neat. at first glance thought it seems like a solved problem of protected branches and separate forks.

As I said - the only people who complain are those who are git users :-)

People who've not used git and come to mercurial don't find anything wanting in it.