Finding the right Windows UI for Mercurial

[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 2012-07-25 19:51, JustMe wrote:
> Why don’t I want an integrated package?  1) I am comfortable with the HG
> command and 2)I don’t want stuff always running in the background on my
> development computer, slowing it down.  I know there is a bunch already
> so don’t want to add more.

Just in case: The TortoiseHg installer (*.msi) has a dialog ("Custom
Setup", always presented) with features, where you can *deselect* things
you don't want.

For the shell integration (Shell Extension), there are two levels: If
you don't want the overlay icons, deselect "Overlay Icons" under "Shell
Extension x64" (for the x64 installer). This will make sure that the
overlay updating process is not installed (TortoiseHgOverlayServer.exe).

If you also don't want the context menu, you can deselect "Shell
Extension x64" entierly, but there is nothing running in the background
for that. The context menu handler is just a COM component running in
explorer.exe (the so-called Windows "shell").

The dialogs of TortoiseHg can perfectly well be started using the
command line. See the 'thg' command line tool.

  $ thg --help
  Thg - TortoiseHg's GUI tools for Mercurial SCM (Hg)

  list of commands:

   about         about dialog
   add           add files
   annotate      annotate dialog
   archive       archive dialog
   backout       backout tool
   bisect        bisect dialog
   clone         clone tool
   commit        commit tool
   ...

As for the dialogs: if you close them, nothing runs in the background
any more. But they may watch files in your repo as long as they are running.