I really enjoy the mercurial / fabric combo as well and I agree with pbreit, start with the basics and build on that over time.
On my development system I clone Web2py itself and then in the applciations directory I create clones of my projects as well. Makes for very fast setup. You can save your database in a repository but things get messy really fast, I would +1 .hgignore ing your database directory and use sqllite as well. Sounds like you are picking up on things very quickly. Way more fun than php and once you get past the initial curve mercurial is sweet... Use mercurial tags to mark versions, very powerful stuff and well worth the effort. Have fun... Chris
