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-<ver>.tar.gz
 $ cd mercurial-<ver>
 $ 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 <hash>  # 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
 $ <make changes>
 $ 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.