mercurial - Why do I need hg update after hg pull while in git I'm doing only git pull

Question

In git to pull and use the latest changes to my local repository I'm using git pull.

In hg, I also use hg pull but it prints then

run 'hg update' to get a working copy

I do run hg update but I wonder why is this difference from git?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19270303/why-do-i-need-hg-update-after-hg-pull-while-in-git-im-doing-only-git-pull

Answer 1

The other answers don't actually answer the question, which is: why don't Git and Mercurial work the same? Is there a philosophical difference?

In Mercurial, pull is the opposite of push: it syncs the local repo with a remote repo without touching the working copy. So it's more consistent.

In Git, pull is a fetch plus a merge, or a pull plus an update in Mercurial terms. Usually this is what you want. So it's more efficient.

The Distributed Version Control University talk has a slide at the 4-minute mark that clearly demonstrates the way Mercurial works. Michael Ernst's Version control concepts and best practices has a similar diagram (included below):