Setting up Mercurial server in IIS7 using a ISAPI module

Previously, Jeremy Skinner posted a very thorough guide on setting up Mercurial in IIS. The difference between his guide, and what I'll be walking you through, is how Mercurial is hosted in IIS. Where he shows you using a CGI script that executes python.exe, my guide will show you how to use isapi-wsgi to host Mercurial. The biggest benefits of using isapi-wsgi over executing python.exe, is the raw processing speed and the overall throughput your server can handle.

Note: This post uses Mercurial 1.5.1, Python 2.6.5 although it should work for all older/future versions released.

Packages Installation

Install Python

The reason you need to install Python first, is that all subsequent installations will install directly into the Python installation (in the Lib\site-packages folder), including Mercurial. It is important to note that you will need to install the version of Python that Mercurial was built against, as well as installing the x86 version (yes, even if you're on a x64 platform). Download and install Python 2.6.5.

Install PyWin32

This component is needed to run certain win32 functions (specifically for ISAPI) that isapi-wsgi needs. Download and install this package, letting it determine the default installation path for you.

Install Mercurial Source

Normally, you would download the binary package for Mercurial, but for this process to work, you will need to utilize the source code package. Download the mercurial-1.5.1.win32-py2.6.exe package and install it. Just as PyWin32, let it determine the default installation path for you.

Install isapi-wsgi

This is the glue that binds everything together. It's used to build a shim based on a python script that you setup (later). Download and install this package, also letting it determine the default installation path for you.

Get hgwebdir_wsgi

You will now need to download the python script hgwebdir_wsgi.py. This is the script that you will configure to and execute to build the ISAPI shim DLL. This script is apart of the Mercurial source code, and is not distributed with the binaries or the earlier installation. To get it, you can download the source code from the Mercurial site, or clone their repository by executing the following command

hg clone http://selenic.com/repo/hg#stable

Once you have the source, you can find the script in the contrib/win32 directory.

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