Using TortoiseHg

Windows users can use TortoiseHg to manage their Mercurial repositories. Here are some tips on how to get started and an overview of the most common tasks which you will need to know in order to interact with your remote Mercurial repositories.

Installing TortoiseHg

Installation is easy and can be done in just a few steps:

  1. Download the TortoiseHg installer from 
    http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/downloads/
  2. Double-click the installer on your Desktop to start the installation process. Follow the installer's instructions.

Your First Checkout

Installation was easy. The tricky part now is getting your SSH agent started. We have provided a step-by-step at

Using SSH Keys in Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista

Those instructions will show you how to create an SSH Key Pair and install your SSH agent. You will need to complete those steps first before you can checkout your repository for the first time.

Once you have your agent started, you can use TortoiseHg to make your first checkout. To do this:

  1. On SSHControl.com, go to your Projects and scroll down to 'Accepted Assignments'.
  2. Click 'view' for the Mercurial project you want to checkout. We assume you have already added a public ssh key for the project assignment. If you have not, please refer to Using SSH Keys in Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista.
  3. Go to the section 'Checkout commands' and copy the url starting from 'ssh://' Copyhgcheckouturl
  4. Back on your Windows desktop (or any location on your computer's file system where you want to store your Mercurial repository), right-click select TortoiseHG -> Clone a Repository Tortoisehgrightclick
  5. In the 'Source Path' field, paste the url copied from step 3.
  6. For the 'Destination Path' field, browse to a location where you want to clone your remote Mercurial repository and click 'Open'. Then append the name of folder which will be the root directory of your local repository. In this example, I browsed to 'C:\Users\alcruz\Documents\src' and appended '\testhg'. (Do not append the name of a folder that already exists. Otherwise TortoiseHg will complain later.) Tortoisehgurl
  7. Click 'Clone'.

If all goes well, TortoiseHg will connect with your remote repository and clone its contents.

Congratulations, you have made your first checkout!