Replying to jdemeyer:
The file spkg-install from the root repo is not under revision control. Is there a reason for this?
I now realize that you're talking about the file spkg-install in the actual spkg file. This is just a copy of root-spkg-install made by sage-make_devel_packages, so we don't need to track it. I'm going to add it to the .hgignore file (by adding ^spkg-install$, so it only matches a file with exactly that name at the top level). This change requires review.
Meanwhile, I'm giving Volker's change to the hg_script a positive review: for me, it makes any errors about dotencode go away when I use an older version of Mercurial to access the repo.
