Cool, great. Except that the Windows command line sucks and bash is uncomfortable to the point of unusability on Windows. I will use a shell (not bash) on Unix platforms where it is properly integrated and meshes with the rest of my workflow; this is not Windows, and attempting to attach it to Windows with baling wire does not work for me.

My experience with source control systems--you know, including ones that aren't git--is that you can generally find a good UI for them. SourceTree on Mac is great for hg and git. Tower is great for git, too. Even TortoiseHg is a country mile past TortoiseGit in usefulness.

I use M-x eshell in Windows to get a somewhat comfy command line.

Tried it, despite not being an Emacs guy - it's better, but not great.

Honestly, when I wasted time (and it really was a waste) using Cygwin or similar stuff, I just ran sshd and SSH'd to myself from Penguinet.

Powershell + msysgit work just fine. It puzzles me why people still keep referring to ye olde command prompt as "the windows command line" when Powershell has actually been around for years now and (while significantly different to bash) is extremely capable. My only complaint really is the lack of dynamic resizing without first consulting the options box.

You might be able to use Console2 to get dynamic realizing. It works for me with got bash at least.

Use Powershell ISE for dynamic resizing and other niceties.

After using Tower on Mac you may change your mind. If there was a client like that on Windows it would win. Currently hg integrates cleanly and more of a svn replacement since it is more open. Note: I code mainly on osx but some .net only on windows.

I always thought it was cool that Mercurial is written in Python, part of that cross platform magic.

cygwin's gitk works just fine. (or sh -c "git gui")