Can I install Mercurial in my home directory?

Question

I would like to install Mercurial on a Linux system where I don't have root access.

How can I do this in a way so that I can easily uninstall Mercurial again and upgrade it when new versions are released?

Also, can I get a package for Windows that does not require admin rights to install?

Answer 1

Mercurial in home directory, how?

It is very easy to compile and install Mercurial in your home directory, I've done so myself.

This linked wiki-post will certainly provide some aid if you have questions;

• UnixInstall

Use make install-home to install hg to your home directory, it'll put the binary file in ~/bin and associative files in ~/lib.

When uninstalling or upgrading to a new version you could either delete the files that the makefile have put in, or let make install-home (if upgrading) overwrite the existing files.

Make sure to update your $PATH after installation so that it includes ~/bin .

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Install Mercurial on windows without being admin, how?

Following the link below will lead you to the download section of Mercurial. There you'll be able to find installation bundles for Windows that doesn't require administration rights.

• Download

Answer 2

I'm aware that this question is already answered but someone could be in the situation I was and that is to have to install without C compiler and make.

Install without C compiler and make

Full description of the solution can be found on following link .

List of commands, without using make

wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.5/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg
mkdir -p ~/software/lib/python2.5/site-packages
export PYTHONPATH=~/software/lib/python2.5/site-packages
sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg --prefix=~/software
export PATH=${PATH}:~/software/bin
easy_install --prefix=~/software docutils
cd ~/software
wget https://www.mercurial-scm.org/release/mercurial-2.5.2.tar.gz
tar xzvf mercurial-2.5.2.tar.gz
cd mercurial-2.5.2.tar.gz
python setup.py --pure install --home="~/software" --force
cd ~/software/lib/python
mv hgext/ ../python2.5/site-packages/
mv mercurial ../python2.5/site-packages/
mv mercurial-2.5.2.egg-info ../python2.5/site-packages/

Append following lines to .bashrc :

export PYTHONPATH=~/software/lib/python2.5/site-packages
export PATH=${PATH}:~/software/bin

Check:

~$ hg
Mercurial Distributed SCM
etc...

Answer 3

Linux

The Mercurial source comes with a Makefile that has a local target. If you run this, then you'll build the C extensions in-place:

$ make local
... (lots of output) ...
python hg version
Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 5b66e55c0d93+20111216)
(see https://www.mercurial-scm.org for more information)

Copyright (C) 2005-2011 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.

You will need the Python header files, they typically come in a python-dev package. You can then symlink the hg script into a directory in your PATH . I use ~/bin for this:

$ cd ~/bin
$ ln -s ../src/mercurial/hg

You can now run hg from any directory.

If you want to uninstall Mercurial, it's as simple as deleting the directory where you did the compile. Upgrading is also easy: unpack a new release in the directory and run make local again. You can also use the newly install Mercurial to clone the Mercurial repository itself:

$ hg clone https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg
$ cd hg
$ make local

This gives you a version of Mercurial from the default branch. Use hg update stable before compiling if you want a build from the stable branch instead. That branch is only updated with bugfixes.

Windows

On that platform, you can use a the Inno setup installers . They do not require admin rights. You can couple that with a portable version of TortoiseHg if you like.