The standalone Windows installer for Mercurial is built in a somewhat

jury-rigged fashion.

It has the following prerequisites, at least as I build it:

  Python for Windows

      http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4.3/python-2.4.3.msi

  MinGW

      http://www.mingw.org/

  Python for Windows Extensions

      http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

      http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/

  The py2exe distutils extension

      http://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/

  Inno Setup

      http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

  ISTool - optional

      http://www.istool.org/default.aspx/

  add_path (you need only add_path.exe in the zip file)

      http://www.barisione.org/apps.html#add_path

  Asciidoc - optional

      http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/

And, of course, Mercurial itself.

Once you have all this installed and built, clone a copy of the

Mercurial repository you want to package, and name the repo

C:\hg\hg-release.

In a shell, build a standalone copy of the hg.exe program:

  python setup.py build -c mingw32

  python setup.py py2exe -b 1

Note: the previously suggested combined command of "python setup.py build -c

mingw32 py2exe -b 1" doesn't work correctly anymore as it doesn't include the

extensions in the mercurial subdirectory.

If you want to create a file named setup.cfg with the contents:

[build]

compiler=mingw32

you can skip the first build step.

Before building the installer, you have to build Mercurial HTML documentation 

(or fix mercurial.iss to not reference the doc directory). Assuming you have an

"asciidoc.bat" batch file somewhere in your PATH:

  cd doc

  mingw32-make ASCIIDOC=asciidoc.bat html

  cd ..

If you use ISTool, you open the C:\hg\hg-release\contrib\win32\mercurial.iss

file and type Ctrl-F9 to compile the installer file.

Otherwise you run the Inno Setup compiler.  Assuming it's on the path you run:

  iscc contrib\win32\mercurial.iss

The actual installer will be in the C:\hg\hg-release\Output directory.

To automate the steps above you may want to create a batchfile based on the

following:

  echo [build] > setup.cfg

  echo compiler=mingw32 >> setup.cfg

  python setup.py py2exe -b 1

  cd doc

  mingw32-make ASCIIDOC=asciidoc.bat html

  cd ..

  iscc contrib\win32\mercurial.iss

and run it from the root of the hg repository (c:\hg\hg-release).