How to get the file content in .hg bundler by Python or other tool?

Question

for example, I want to use Python or other tool to get the file "test.txt" content in ".hg" which stored by TortoiseHg, but I don't want to clone the ".hg" file to local, I only want to go into this ".hg" and read content without changing anything.

Answer 1

1. Every .hg folder is not a "bundle" in terms of Mercurial, it's ordinary repository, without Working Directory only
2. You can (by natural methods) do nothing with it, and have to
   • get content of repo in Working Directory (hg up in .hg parent dir)
   • make changes
   • commit

in order to get modified repo