So hg branches should behave like completely separate clones/repos that happen to live within the same folder/URL. That would fix pretty much all issues and be

So hg branches should behave like completely separate clones/repos that happen to live within the same folder/URL. That would fix pretty much all issues and be completely straight-forward since it mimics the separate-clones-as-branches model originally promoted by hg, with the difference that you don't have separate folders for the clones.