How to install Mercurial 1.0 on Cygwin

Date: 2008-04-17 | Tags: cygwin, mercurial | 5 Comments

Mercurial 1.0 has been released and I just posted, How to install Mercurial 1.0 on Ubuntu Gutsy (or Hardy). Here are instructions for installing Mercurial 1.0 on Cygwin.

Install Mercurial 1.0

Install Python Easy Install

$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
$ python ez_setup.py

Install Mercurial 1.0
```
$ easy_install -U mercurial
```
Trying hg version, gives me a ImportError: Permission denied error. Apparently, there is a Eggs/Cygwin problem. To fix it, make the dll files executable:
```
$ chmod +x /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mercurial-1.0-py2.5-cygwin-1.5.25-i686.egg/mercurial/*.dll
```

Try hg version again:

Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 1.0)

Copyright (C) 2005-2008 Matt Mackall  and others
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Install hgk extension
I'm not sure how to get hg view working in Cygwin. If anyone knows, please let me know.

Comments

#1 Jonathan commented on 2008-05-04:

The Tcl/Tk in Cygwin doesn't like hgk (always sets window attributes to negative values so you can't see anything). I came across a recommendation to use freewrap (http://freewrap.sourceforge.net/) to convert hgk into an executable. This worked for me. Hopefully what I describe below (from memory) is accurate.

I downloaded freewrap641.zip and unzipped it in ~/bin (uncomment the lines in your ~/.bash_profile to add ~/bin to you path). I then created an update script to grab the latest hgk and run freewrap on it:
$ cat update_hgk.sh

!/bin/sh

cd ~/bin &&\
wget -O hgk.tcl http://selenic.com/repo/index.cgi/hg-stable/raw-file/tip/contrib/hgk && \
chmod 755 hgk.tcl && \
freewrap hgk.tcl

Running this creates ~/bin/hgk.exe. Then all you need to do is ensure you have hgk enabled in ~/.hgrc:
[extensions]
hgext.hgk =

After those steps "hg view" works fine. Whenever you upgrade mercurial just remember to run the update_hgk.sh script to ensure your hgk executable is up-to-date.

#2 sofeng commented on 2008-05-05:

Jonathan,
Thanks for the tip! I will try it out.
-sofeng

#3 Jonathan commented on 2008-05-05:

Oh yeah, one more thing. Depending on your env you may need to create a Windows hg "executable"; freewrap creates a Windows executable and it doesn't like calling the Cygwin hg python script. Coupled with the previous enabling of ~/bin, this did the trick for me:
$ cat ~/bin/hg.bat
@echo off
C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -c "/bin/hg %*"

#4 Jonathan commented on 2008-05-05:

This really simplifies the whole thing:
Using mercurial on windows with cygwin

TortoiseHg-0.4-rc2 _just works_. Sure, you have to use "hgtk log" instead of "hg view", but with only one installation it works in Explorer, in Cygwin, and in Eclipse. The only downside is that I can't seem to find a way to use different merge tools when in Cygwin (prefer vi) and when using the Explorer integration (prefer GUI tool).

#5 Ramesh Nagul commented on 2009-07-01:

This was great! Thanks! I think this article should be part of code.google.com