Use patch.patch() when checking for patch availability. The test is closer to what we want to know. It also makes sense when you deal with patched versions of patch() as most people do under win32.

#!/bin/sh

echo '[Section]' >> $HGRCPATH
echo 'KeY = Case Sensitive' >> $HGRCPATH
echo 'key = lower case' >> $HGRCPATH

hg showconfig