Um, could you please elaborate on that :-p for a simply magic lantern enthusiast - what are "name strings"?
Here's what I did. I hg clone -r unified
https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern. Remember to
cd to where you want the download before you do it.
then once it's done I copy the folder in place. Example:
/your folder/magic-lantern is the original clone from bitbucket.
your folder/magic-lantern2 is my working dir. as soon as I copy the folder I open terminal and
cd /your folder/magic-lantern2.if you have your source code on your computer, copy it to this folder in the appropriate places (e.g.. if your working on modules don't overwrite the whole folder just add your part. type in terminal
make clean and then
make, then,
cd /your folder/magic-lantern/modules/your module, then type
make (name of your module) minus the parentheses. if you need to see how to set up the makefile look at the other modules. I recommend sourcetree it's free from bitbucket.
If you want to combine unified and some other fork or branch. do as before and make a copy of your clone. then go to
bitbucket.org/hudson/magiclantern/downloads. if you click on tags or branches you can download the source for a tag or branch in zip format. Once you do. Unzip and copy the stuff you downloaded to your copy ( this is where making a copy of the clone and using something like source tree is wonderful). once you copy the stuff you want to work on into your copied unified,
make clean && make, and go nuts. If you screw something up, you can either make yourself another one by copying your original clone, or use sourcetree to revert your changes. ( the beauty of copying the clone, is a) you never mess with the "pristine" code, and it's like undo for me ( cause i'm a dumb noob at this, and sometimes i just gotta start over) you can use this method for versioning, once you've got a change that works, make clean and copy the folder, so your next working dir is
/your folder/magic-lantern3.
hope it helps.
and name strings looks to be an author descriptor for the module, so when you open it on your camera your name and such is there instead of no one or, one of the dev's, I think.

ALSO. In your
makefile.user make sure, to turn on TCC and modules. it's at the bottom in the config section, you must turn both on TCC helps make modules and modules make you
yourcamer.sym file, and that's the one that's giving you all the trouble i'd say, is, you need to make (at least as far as I understand it) your
autoexec.bin and your
yourcamera.sym file at the same time, the modules not so much.