Setting up Mercurial in your home directory: Note: Debian fails to include bits of distutils, you'll need python-dev to install. Alternately, shove everything somewhere in your path. $ tar xvzf mercurial-.tar.gz $ cd mercurial- $ python2.3 setup.py install --home ~ $ export PYTHONPATH=${HOME}/lib/python # add this to your .bashrc $ export HGMERGE=tkmerge # customize this $ hg # test installation, show help If you get complaints about missing modules, you probably haven't set PYTHONPATH correctly. Setting up a Mercurial project: $ cd linux/ $ hg init # creates .hg $ hg status # show changes between repo and working dir $ hg diff # generate a unidiff $ hg export # export a changeset as a diff $ hg addremove # add all unknown files and remove all missing files $ hg commit # commit all changes, edit changelog entry Mercurial will look for a file named .hgignore in the root of your repository contains a set of regular expressions to ignore in file paths. Mercurial commands: $ hg history # show changesets $ hg log Makefile # show commits per file $ hg checkout # check out the tip revision $ hg checkout # check out a specified changeset $ hg add foo # add a new file for the next commit $ hg remove bar # mark a file as removed $ hg verify # check repo integrity Branching and merging: $ cd .. $ mkdir linux-work $ cd linux-work $ hg branch ../linux # create a new branch $ hg checkout # populate the working directory $ $ hg commit $ cd ../linux $ hg merge ../linux-work # pull changesets from linux-work Importing patches: Fast: $ patch < ../p/foo.patch $ hg addremove $ hg commit Faster: $ patch < ../p/foo.patch $ hg commit `lsdiff -p1 ../p/foo.patch` Fastest: $ cat ../p/patchlist | xargs hg import -p1 -b ../p Network support: The simple way: # pull the self-hosting hg repo foo$ hg init foo$ hg merge http://selenic.com/hg/ foo$ hg checkout # hg co works too # export your .hg directory as a directory on your webserver foo$ ln -s .hg ~/public_html/hg-linux # merge changes from a remote machine bar$ hg merge http://foo/~user/hg-linux The new, fast, experimental way: # pull the self-hosting hg repo foo$ hg init foo$ hg merge hg://selenic.com/hg/ foo$ hg checkout # hg co works too # Set up the CGI server on your webserver foo$ ln -s .hg ~/public_html/hg-linux/.hg foo$ cp hgweb.py ~/public_html/hg-linux/index.cgi # merge changes from a remote machine bar$ hg merge hg://foo/~user/hg-linux Another approach which does perform well right now is to use rsync. Simply rsync the remote repo to a read-only local copy and then do a local pull.