Correct way to install Mercurial on Ubuntu

Question

I am kind of new to both, Mercurial and Ubuntu.

I seem to have awkwardly installed a few other software packages already, so I wanted to see how others would go about do

Answer 1

NEW ANSWER

Previously I was pointing to TortoiseHG PPA, which also contained Mercurial. For now (year 2015) the more recent version of Mercurial is in another PPA, specific for Mercurial only.

Important note: this version is incompatible with TortoiseHG, and Tortoise will be REMOVED, if you install the more recent Mercurial!

If you don't care of Tortoise and just want more recent Mercurial package, use next command to install:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:mercurial-ppa/releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y mercurial

However, this won't give you the absolutely latest version either. To enjoy the latest version, you may want to install it via PIP:

sudo apt-get install -y python-pip python-dev
sudo pip install mercurial --upgrade

This would give you the very latest version (3.6.2 vs 3.3.2 from the PPA). Seems this one is also not compatible with TortoiseHG from the repos.

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OLD ANSWER

Though available from default repos, the version there is outdated. At the time of writing: 2.2.2 vs 2.5.2. So I would recommend to use the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:tortoisehg-ppa/releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mercurial tortoisehg

TortoiseHG is not required, but is recommended.