manage.... clones? or branches?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Krilin Wantun writes:

 > * Given this scenario, is it better to work with checkouts or branches?

Branches.  The point of a checkout is to ensure that the local version
is always identical to the mainline, but as you describe you situation
that is not so.

 > * When I commit a change from CLIENT2 and push it to MAINBRANCH, is 
 > there an automatic way to propagate this push to all CLIENT1, CLIENT3, 
 > ..., CLIENTX?

No.  In general this is a bad idea (each branches' needs are unique
...).  In any case you need to do additional work for each such branch
(build the software) so you may as well make a pull from the mainline
part of that workflow.  This meets your needs without imposing a
constraint that may be bad in general.

 > * After committing a revision, it seems the button MERGE does nothing, 
 > and I need to push the PUSH button instead, is this correct? What if I 
 > have parallel changes, MERGE should work then?

Not clear what you want here?