Mercurial version 0.9 for Windows

Welcome to Mercurial for Windows!

Mercurial is a command-line application. You must run it from the Windows command prompt (or if you're hard core, a MinGW shell).

Note: the standard MinGW msys startup script uses rxvt which has problems setting up standard input and output. Running bash directly works correctly.

For documentation, please visit the Mercurial web site.

By default, Mercurial installs to C:\Mercurial. The Mercurial command is called hg.exe. To run this command, the install directory must be in your search path.

Setting your search path temporarily

To set your search path temporarily, type the following into a command prompt window:

set PATH=C:\Mercurial;%PATH%

Setting your search path permanently

To set your search path permanently, perform the following steps. These instructions are for Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

  1. Open the Control Panel. Under Windows XP, select the "Classic View".
  2. Double-click on the "System" control panel.
  3. Click on the "Advanced" tab.
  4. Click on "Environment Variables". You'll find this near the bottom of the window.
  5. Under "System variables", you will see "Path". Double-click it.
  6. Edit "Variable value". Each path element is separated by a semicolon (";") character. Append a semicolon to the end of the list, followed by the path where you installed Mercurial (e.g. C:\Mercurial).
  7. Click on the various "OK" buttons until you've completely exited from the System control panel.
  8. Log out and log back in, or restart your system.
  9. The next time you run the Windows command prompt, you will be able to run the hg command without any special help.

Testing Mercurial after you've installed it

The easiest way to check that Mercurial is installed properly is to just type the following at the command prompt:

hg

This command should print a useful help message. If it does, other Mercurial commands should work fine for you.

Configuration notes

The default editor is 'vi'. You can set the EDITOR environment variable (or HGEDITOR) to specify your preference.

Reporting problems

Before you report any problems, please consult the Mercurial web site and see if your question is already in our list of Frequently Answered Questions (the "FAQ").

If you cannot find an answer to your question, please feel free to send mail to the Mercurial mailing list, at mercurial@selenic.com. Remember, the more useful information you include in your report, the easier it will be for us to help you!

If you are IRC-savvy, that's usually the fastest way to get help. Go to #mercurial on irc.freenode.net.

Author and copyright information

Mercurial was written by Matt Mackall, and is maintained by Matt and a team of volunteers.

The Windows installer was written by Bryan O'Sullivan.

Mercurial is Copyright 2005, 2006 Matt Mackall and others. See the Contributors.txt file for a list of contributors.

Mercurial is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Mercurial is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.