Beyond Compare left/right file ordering using Mercurial

Question

The left/right files in BeyondCompare merge are reversed when using hg fetch vs an hg pull + hg merge. Is there any reason for this? Is there a way to keep the same configuration?

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Update:

Related question/answer: Completely manual Mercurial merge

Answer 1

Yes, there's a reason. From hg help fetch:

When a merge occurs, the newly pulled changes are assumed to be "authoritative". The head of the new changes is used as the first parent, with local changes as the second. To switch the merge order, use --switch-parent.

This means a fetch is similar to the following manual workflow:

1. pull
2. update to new pulled head
3. merge

Using the --switch-parent option skips step 2 and thus prevents a reversed merge.