Because the overhead of dropping files into a new Mercurial repository is so low, it makes a lot of sense to manage patches this way even if you simply want to make a few changes to a source tarball that you downloaded.

Begin by downloading and unpacking the source tarball, and turning it into a Mercurial repository.

$ download netplug-1.2.5.tar.bz2
$ tar jxf netplug-1.2.5.tar.bz2
$ cd netplug-1.2.5
$ hg init
$ hg commit -q --addremove --message netplug-1.2.5
$ cd ..
$ hg clone netplug-1.2.5 netplug
updating working directory
18 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Continue by creating a patch stack and making your changes.

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