Requirements

Building the Inno installer requires a Windows machine.

The following system dependencies must be installed:

• Python 2.7 (download from https://www.python.org/downloads/)
• Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44266)
• Inno Setup (http://jrsoftware.org/isdl.php) version 5.4 or newer. Be sure to install the optional Inno Setup Preprocessor feature, which is required.
• Python 3.5+ (to run the build.py script)

Building

The build.py script automates the process of producing an Inno installer. It manages fetching and configuring the non-system dependencies (such as py2exe, gettext, and various Python packages).

The script requires an activated Visual C++ 2008 command prompt. A shortcut to such a prompt was installed with Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7. From your Start Menu, look for Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler Package for Python 2.7 then launch either Visual C++ 2008 32-bit Command Prompt or Visual C++ 2008 64-bit Command Prompt.

From the prompt, change to the Mercurial source directory. e.g. cd c:\src\hg.

Next, invoke build.py to produce an Inno installer. You will need to supply the path to the Python interpreter to use.:

$ python3.exe contrib\packaging\inno\build.py \
    --python c:\python27\python.exe

If everything runs as intended, dependencies will be fetched and configured into the build sub-directory, Mercurial will be built, and an installer placed in the dist sub-directory. The final line of output should print the name of the generated installer.

Additional options may be configured. Run build.py --help to see a list of program flags.

MinGW

It is theoretically possible to generate an installer that uses MinGW. This isn't well tested and build.py and may properly support it. See old versions of this file in version control for potentially useful hints as to how to achieve this.