Why does mercurial "hg log --style paper" give me "permission denied" error?

Question

hg log works.
hg log --style does not work.

C:\temp\myhg>"c:\program files\mercurial\hg" log

changeset:   0:9c62e300d833
user:        Administrator@biostar
date:        Wed Oct 21 04:57:41 2009 -0500
summary:     124 my first commit

C:\temp\myhg>"c:\program files\mercurial\hg" log --style paper
abort: Permission denied: c:\program files\mercurial\templates\paper

As long as you're reading, here's the big picture: I want to get log format in an easy-to-parse format. If I use a --template {files} with the the log command, and if there are spaces in the filenames, the output isn't friendly to parsing. So, according to the docs, I need to use a "style". But, I can't even get as far as using the styles that install with Mercurial.

I did a vanilla install of Mercurial on Windows XP and have been able to run the init, add, commit, and log commands with no problems.

Answer 1

For me, hg help templating says:

Three styles are packaged with Mercurial: default (the style used when no explicit preference is passed), compact and changelog.

Perhaps something needs to be done to enable the paper style? I'm not sure.

Answer 2

AFAIK, html template sets like 'paper' are designed for being used from hgweb. I don't know how to use them from command line.

What you can do: write a style that would be easy to parse.

To use a style you need to have a file named map-cmdline.<style> in templates subdirectory of your Hg installation. Here is the sample of creating template for custom log report. Here is a chapter on styles from HgBook.

Hope this will help you.