How to get CruiseControl.NET working with Mercurial: "Source control failure (GetModifications)" - mercurial

Question

I'm trying to set up CruiseControl.NET 1.5.7256.1 for automatic builds. My project is stored in Mercurial, and I'm using the following ccnet.config:
<cruisecontrol xmlns:cb="urn:ccnet.config.builder">
<project name="Slider" webURL="http://localhost/ccnet">
<triggers>
<intervalTrigger seconds="3600" />
</triggers>
<sourcecontrol type="hg" autoGetSource="true">
<executable>C:\Python26\Scripts\hg.bat</executable>
<repo>c:\repos\slider</repo>
<workingDirectory>c:\ccnet\slider</workingDirectory>
</sourcecontrol>
<tasks>
<msbuild>
<executable>C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe</executable>
<workingDirectory>c:\ccnet\slider</workingDirectory>
<projectFile>Slider.sln</projectFile>
<buildArgs>/noconsolelogger /p:Configuration=Debug /v:diag</buildArgs>
<targets>Slider</targets>
<timeout>900</timeout>
<logger>C:\Program Files (x86)\CruiseControl.NET\server\ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.MsBuild.dll</logger>
</msbuild>
</tasks>
</project>
</cruisecontrol>
But when I force a build, I get this error:
[Slider:WARN] Source control failure (GetModifications): Source control operation failed: < was unexpected at this time.
. Process command: C:\Python26\Scripts\hg.bat log -r 0:123 --template <modification><node>{node|short}</node><author>{author|user}</author><date>{date|rfc822date}</date><desc>{desc|escape}</desc><rev>{rev}</rev><email>{author|email|obfuscate}</email><files>{files}</files></modification> --noninteractive
[Slider:INFO] Integration complete: Exception - 12/2/2010 1:19:08 PM
The error is presumably caused by the unquoted angle brackets in the --template parameter, but how can I make CC.NET put quotes around that parameter?
===============
Here's hg.bat:
#echo off
rem Windows Driver script for Mercurial
setlocal
set HG=%~f0
rem Use a full path to Python (relative to this script) as the standard Python
rem install does not put python.exe on the PATH...
rem %~dp0 is the directory of this script
%~dp0..\python "%~dp0hg" %*
endlocal

Answer 1

I'm successfully using CruiseControl.NET 1.5.7256.1 with Mercurial installed from this msi, using full path of hg.exe as the executable value.
In project\core\sourcecontrol\Mercurial\Mercurial.cs the template is used like this:
buffer.AddArgument("--template", HistoryTemplate)
and will be formatted for the command line like this:
string.Format("{0}{1}{2}", arg, separator, StringUtil.AutoDoubleQuoteString(value))
where the separator is " ", and AutoDoubleQuoteString will quote the template, so this can't be the cause of the error.
UPDATE 1
Actually, AutoDoubleQuoteString should quote the template, but in the current version doesn't do it. Also, even if the build succeeds when using hg.exe, running the actual command line in a command prompt returns the same error.
UPDATE 2
CruiseControl.NET 1.6.7981.1 was just released (see release notes), and since the template is now passed as a file, it works just fine (at least on my PC).