TortoiseHg provides visual representation of the file status via overlay icons in the MS-Explorer windows. This is similar to those that found on other Tortoise client, such as TortoiseCVS and TortoiseSVN.
TortoiseHg shares the overlay icons with TortoiseSVN (version 1.5.x or later) and the other “Tortoise” projects via the use of TortoiseOverlays (another project created by TortoiseSVN team).
Overlay icons in Icons view (XP)
The context menu has an Update Icons option which forces TortoiseHg to refresh the icons in the currently browsed repository or directory of repositories. The taskbar icon will turn green and the directory icons will turn into question marks while this refresh is in progress.
The new C++ shell extension is an order of magnitude faster than the Python extension used in previous releases, but we still make the overlays configurable via the taskbar menu. Simply click on the Mercurial (droplet) icon in the system tray and select Options. In the options dialog you can disable overlays globally, or enable them for local disks only.
Taskbar Options Dialog
Release 0.8.1 introduced the ability to selectively disable overlay icons in specific repositories. This can be done by editing the .hg\thgstatus file inside the repository and replacing it’s contents with a single line containing:
@@noicons
TortoiseHg also provides shell integration with the GNOME desktop via a nautilus-python plugin. If you have installed TortoiseHg from a distribution package, the odds are that this extension is already configured. If not, please consult our Wiki for instructions on how to enable this feature.
While the nautilus extension does not have it’s own GUI for managing the overlays and context menus, it does support command promotion into the top menu. It requires you to edit your ~/.hgrc file and add lines like these:
[tortoisehg]
promoteditems = commit, log, synch
GNOME/Nautilus screenshot