mercurialtortoisehgpagerless-unix

Mercurial (TortoiseHG) command-line on Windows does not respond to pager environment variables (and fails to use a pager at all)

When I run commands such as hg log, I expect to see the output in a pager. I have configured my repository .hg\hgrc to use less:

...
[pager]
pager = C:\path\to\bin\less.exe
...

I have confirmed that less is correctly installed, as I am able to run it.
I have also confirmed with hg config --debug that this environment setting is correctly registered:

...
C:\path\to\repo/.hg/hgrc:23: pager.pager=C:\path\to\bin\less.exe
...

However, the output is instead dumped into terminal. This is a major nuisance, especially with hg log since the project I am working on has history dating back to 2001. Removing the configuration settings does not cause output to go through more, which according to Mercurial documentation should be the default Windows pager. (and yes, I have checked that more is installed)

If no pager is set in the user or repository configuration, Mercurial uses the environment variable $PAGER. If $PAGER is not set, pager.pager from the default or system configuration is used. If none of these are set, a default pager will be used, typically 'less' on Unix and 'more' on Windows.

Is it a known issue that Mercurial pager support on Windows is currently broken? If not, what steps can I take to make Mercurial recognize and use a pager? At this point I don't even care if it uses less as long as the output is sent to any pager.

Environment: Mercurial version 6.3.2 (installed with TortoiseHG) on Windows 11.
I have attempted to run hg commands through Command Prompt, Powershell, and Git Bash; none of them correctly use the pager configuration (or any other pager, e.g. more).

EDIT: in response to a comment below, here is the full output of hg --version --verbose:

Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 6.3.2)
(see https://mercurial-scm.org for more information)

Copyright (C) 2005-2023 Olivia Mackall and others
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Enabled extensions:

This question does not resolve my issue as it uses the PagerExtension, which is outdated and unnecessary as of current Mercurial version. I have also tried the steps here to use the PagerExtension, to no avail.

Solution

  • TortoiseHG is slightly different than pure Mercurial in Windows, not due to code-changes, but (as it was discovered during last researches) due to py2exe limitations. Pager support is one of such things: if you'll run hg version --debug you'll see warning about it

    > hg version --debug
pager is unavailable with py2exe packaging
Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 6.3.2)
(see https://mercurial-scm.org for more information)
...

    Workarounds