Install mercurial with Homebrew

agent safety

Agent safety answer

mercurial mutates source-control repositories and remote history.

Credential access

Reads repository config, credential helpers, auth files, and local history.

Remote mutation

Can push changesets, tags, bookmarks, and remote repository changes.

Publish/artifact risk

Can publish source changes and release tags.

Recommended control

Gate pushes, credential reads, destructive history operations, and tag creation.

Agent-use guidance

Allow status/log/diff; require approval for pushes, credential use, and history rewrites.

install

Additional install commands

macOS

Homebrewverified · 100%

brew install mercurial

provider-native install command

overview

Package summary

Scalable distributed version control system

Project links

Homepage

Commands and aliases

chg
hg

history

Project history and usage

Mercurial is a distributed source-control management system invoked mainly through the hg command. Matt Mackall, later Olivia Mackall, started it in April 2005 after Linux kernel developers lost the free BitKeeper arrangement. The Architecture of Open Source Applications describes Mercurial and Git as parallel 2005 responses to the need for a scalable distributed VCS capable of handling large kernel-sized histories; it also notes Mackall's early goals of simplicity, scalability, and efficiency.

Project history

Technically, Mercurial stores project history as a distributed graph of changesets. Like Git, it uses SHA-1-derived changeset identifiers, but it emphasizes a comparatively small, coherent command set and a clone model where most operations are local. The official Mercurial site positions it as a free distributed SCM that handles projects of any size, supports many workflows, and can be extended.

Adoption history

Mercurial's adoption history is strongly tied to large repositories and to teams that valued a scriptable CLI with a less sprawling user model than Git. Facebook selected Mercurial while replacing a Subversion server plus Git mirror, then published work on scaling it for a repository with thousands of weekly commits and hundreds of thousands of files. That scaling lineage later connected to Mononoke and Sapling: Meta's Sapling README says Sapling's CLI was originally based on Mercurial and shares aspects of Mercurial's UI and features, while Mononoke is described as a Mercurial source-control server for large monorepos.

How it is used

For package managers, Mercurial is a classic cross-platform developer tool rather than an application-specific CLI. It appears across Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Nix, MacPorts, Windows package managers, and others, with hg as the primary executable and chg as a command server client for faster repeated commands.

Sources

security posture

No protected-tool coverage found yet

No matching local secret-handling manifest was found for mercurial. Nucleus package metadata is still published here so future coverage has a stable package URL.

Install behavior

No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.

Recommended review

Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.

local files

Configuration and credential file locations

These source-backed paths show where this package keeps local settings or durable credentials. Automic Vault can use them as review targets for secret scanning, migration, and command approval.

Configuration files

Config paths the tool may read or write during local use.

Unix: ~/.hgrc$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/hg/hgrc~/.config/hg/hgrc

Credential files

Credential-bearing paths to review before unattended agent runs.

Unix: ~/.hgrc$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/hg/hgrc~/.config/hg/hgrc

executables

Installed executables

Command	Kind	Exposure	Note
`chg`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`hg`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.

freshness

Version and freshness

These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.

page generated2026-08-03

manager version7.2.3

manager updated2026-06-29

local dataunknown

upstreamnot available

latest detectednot detected

okNo freshness warnings were generated.

install metadata

Package metadata

Package key	brew:mercurial
Version	7.2.3
Package manager	Homebrew
Homepage	https://mercurial-scm.org/
Last updated	2026-06-29T18:50:44Z
Pulse	updated
Bottle	not recorded
Service	none declared

package graph

Links come from deterministic package relationships, av.db category and tag curation, ecosystem matches, and package hub membership.

source trail

Generated from repository data

This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.

Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub.

combined/mercurial.yml

Used sources

Geiger risk classifier
Nucleus package database
curated agent safety answer
curated configuration and credential file locations
curated package history
pkgdb category and tag curation