[ubernostrum]

nonchalantly create and shuffle between several local, topical working branches

That functionality's actually available in hg, it just doesn't seem to get used much (except by people who are being forced to use hg and want to make it just like git). The more common workflow seems to be using different clones for different branches, which has both advantages and disadvantages, as does git's approach; it seems mostly that people choose a VCS depending on which side of the tradeoff they like best.

[silentbicycle]

You're right. I found keeping a different directory for a different branch a bit annoying, but it's not a big deal. (Besides, if you're keeping really, really large binaries under VC, you're probably using the wrong tool.)

[ubernostrum]

Well, again -- you don't have to do the whole separate-clones thing. Mercurial's bookmarks are pretty much git-style branches under a different name, for example. And even though they're provided by an extension they're really not anything fancy: they're just a thin layer of UI on top of normal hg operations (in hg terms, bookmarks just boil down to a way to name -- and thus jump to, merge from, etc. -- heads in the repository).