diff --git a/dev-vcs/mercurial/mercurial-1.8.3.bep b/dev-vcs/mercurial/mercurial-1.8.3.bep
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1769cff1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dev-vcs/mercurial/mercurial-1.8.3.bep
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+DESCRIPTION="Mercurial is a free, distributed source control management tool" 
+HOMEPAGE="http://mercurial.selenic.com/" 
+SRC_URI="http://mercurial.selenic.com/release/mercurial-1.8.3.tar.gz"
+CHECKSUM_MD5="7afea936dfdb21220064cac6402f8743"
+REVISION="1"
+STATUS_HAIKU="stable"
+DEPEND="dev-lang/python >= 2.3"
+BUILD {
+	cd mercurial-1.8.3
+	python setup.py build --force
+}
+
+INSTALL {
+	cd mercurial-1.8.3
+	if [ -n "${DESTDIR}" ];then
+		python setup.py install --root="${DESTDIR}" --prefix="/boot/common" --force
+	else
+		python setup.py install --prefix="/boot/common" --force
+	fi
+}
+
+TEST {
+	cd mercurial-1.8.3/tests
+	python run-tests.py
+}
+
+LICENSE="GNU GPL v2"
+COPYRIGHT="2005-2011 Matt Mackall et al. "
diff --git a/dev-vcs/mercurial/patches/mercurial-1.8.3.patch b/dev-vcs/mercurial/patches/mercurial-1.8.3.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f43d9e245
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dev-vcs/mercurial/patches/mercurial-1.8.3.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+diff -up mercurial-1.8.3/mercurial/ui.py.orig mercurial-1.8.3/mercurial/ui.py
+--- mercurial-1.8.3/mercurial/ui.py.orig	2011-05-01 04:57:56.062128128 -0600
++++ mercurial-1.8.3/mercurial/ui.py	2011-05-04 13:08:44.669515776 -0600
+@@ -580,7 +580,7 @@ class ui(object):
+         return (os.environ.get("HGEDITOR") or
+                 self.config("ui", "editor") or
+                 os.environ.get("VISUAL") or
+-                os.environ.get("EDITOR", "vi"))
++                os.environ.get("EDITOR", "nano"))
+ 
+     def progress(self, topic, pos, item="", unit="", total=None):
+         '''show a progress message