lightweight/portable VCS for server-hopping DBA?

Question

I'm looking for a VCS that'll help me keep all of my work scripts in-sync.

Requirements:

• Portable (as in flash drive, not code-level)
• Run on Windows XP and Server 2003+
• No installation dependencies (Cygwin, perl, Python)

I use Mercurial on my work machine for version control of the various T-SQL, ksh, perl, and CMD/BAT scripts that I maintain as a MS SQL Server DBA and Unix sysadmin. So far, hg has worked for my AIX boxes- I mount my home directory as I login, and deal with the repo as if it were local.

I haven't been able to find a similar solution for the Windows machines I use. Most of them I do not have Local Admin rights; even if I did, I'd rather not install (and maintain) Python + Mercurial on all of them. I can't get to my home directory on them remotely, which leaves a client running on each machine as the only option.

Bonus points for an answer that would let me use a single repo for both the Windows and Unix machines. :)

I'm running WinXP, with heavy use of Cygwin and a CrunchBang VM.

Answer 1

I use git myself, but am familiar with hg, bzr, etc. Fossil is the only one I've seen that is self-contained. It's used by the sqlite project, primarily.

See http://www.fossil-scm.org/

It should work across all the platforms you listed, as well!

Answer 2

If you like mercurial, it's easy to carry it around portably on a usb drive. There are several portable python packages out there. Instant django includes mercurial http://www.instantdjango.com/ and makes the rest of the python toolbox available to you as well.

I use it myself.