Q:

funny that when .hgignore is added for Mercurial, this file itself shows up as "?" in hg status?

Is it normal?  So you just need to add \.hgignore to the list to ignore itself?

A:

Yes, but you don't want to ignore the .hgignore file.  When a new person checks out your repository, don't you want them to get your ignored-files list?  Instead, do hg add .hgignore; hg commit.
Bottom line: .hgignore is tracked like any other file in the repository.

