--- a/mercurial/context.py	Wed Jun 18 22:52:25 2008 +0200
+++ b/mercurial/context.py	Wed Jun 18 22:52:26 2008 +0200
@@ -446,10 +446,11 @@
     """A workingctx object makes access to data related to
     the current working directory convenient.
     parents - a pair of parent nodeids, or None to use the dirstate.
+    extra - a dictionary of extra values, or None.
     changes - a list of file lists as returned by localrepo.status()
                or None to use the repository status.
     """
-    def __init__(self, repo, parents=None, changes=None):
+    def __init__(self, repo, parents=None, extra=None, changes=None):
         self._repo = repo
         self._rev = None
         self._node = None
@@ -459,6 +460,19 @@
         if changes:
             self._status = list(changes)
 
+        self._extra = {}
+        if extra:
+            self._extra = extra.copy()
+        if 'branch' not in self._extra:
+            branch = self._repo.dirstate.branch()
+            try:
+                branch = branch.decode('UTF-8').encode('UTF-8')
+            except UnicodeDecodeError:
+                raise util.Abort(_('branch name not in UTF-8!'))
+            self._extra['branch'] = branch
+        if self._extra['branch'] == '':
+            self._extra['branch'] = 'default'
+
     def __str__(self):
         return str(self._parents[0]) + "+"
 
@@ -518,7 +532,8 @@
     def deleted(self): return self._status[3]
     def unknown(self): return self._status[4]
     def clean(self): return self._status[5]
-    def branch(self): return self._repo.dirstate.branch()
+    def branch(self): return self._extra['branch']
+    def extra(self): return self._extra
 
     def tags(self):
         t = []