Tutorial - getting started: installation

Installing ["Mercurial"] is straightforward.

Once we're done, we'll come back here.

Note: This tutorial assumes you are running a version of ["Mercurial"] later than 0.6. In other words, if you have the 0.6 release, the tutorial will not work for you.

The ["Mercurial"] program is named hg. Every ["Mercurial"] command starts with hg, followed by the command name, followed by any relevant options and arguments.

Now we should be able to simply type hg at the prompt, and the program should display some helpful command summaries:

 $ hg
 basic hg commands (use "hg help -v" for more):

 add        add the specified files on the next commit
 annotate   show changeset information per file line
 clone      make a copy of an existing repository
 ...

If this does not happen, there is something wrong with our installation, and we should take a look at InstallTroubleshooting.

To determine what version of Mercurial you are running, type:

 $ hg version
 Mercurial version fa3578bfafbf+20050629

 Copyright (C) 2005 Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
 This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
 warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE

If all has gone well, let's continue on to TutorialClone.