BuildingWindowsInstaller

[Note: this page has been adapted from contrib/win32/win32-build.txt found in Mercurial's source tree]

The standalone Windows installer for Mercurial is built in a somewhat jury-rigged fashion.

Prerequisites

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

Python for Windows

• http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4.1/python-2.4.1.msi

MinGW

• http://www.mingw.org/

Python for Windows Extensions

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

mfc71.dll (just download, don't install)

• 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

• 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

And, of course, Mercurial itself

• http://www.selenic.com/hg/

Building Installer

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 py2exe -b 1

Copy mfc71.dll and add_path.exe into the dist directory that just got created.

Run ISTool, and open the C:\hg\hg-release\contrib\win32\mercurial.iss file.

In ISTool, type Ctrl-F9 to compile the installer file. The actual installer will be in the C:\hg\hg-release\Output directory.