Re: [VOTE] git versus mercurial (for DragonflyBSD)

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 26, 2008, 18:55 UTC
Message-ID: <200810261955.10536.jnareb@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <ee2a733e0810260805n35c3a637v4739dda938a22518@mail.gmail.com>

I'm not sure if Mercurial mailing list is not subscribe only. Git isn't.

On Sun, 26 Oct 2008, Leo Razoumov wrote:

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> On 10/26/08, Maxim Vuets <maxim.vuets@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 26 Oct 2008 15:15:57 +0100, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> 1. Documentation and ease of use.
>>>
>>>    Mercurial is supposedly better documented and easier to use; I
>>>    think this descends from the early days of Git, where it was not
>>>    very user friendly. IMHO Git has much improved since.  Mercurial
>>>    had 'hgbook' from the beginning; Git User's Manual is more recent.
>>
>> Also, there is http://book.git-scm.com/ that is similar to hgbook, I think.
>>
>>  Thanks for the comprarision!
> 
> I have been using Mercurial for about two years and am very
> comfortable with it.  Here are some cons and pros
> 
> Mercurial PROS:
> * Easier and more consistent UI. Newbie friendly.

I think that _might_ be example of "Worse is better" scenario, with Git having UI which evolved rather than was designed, and therefore less consistent.

Also if you are limiting to what is described in main chapters of 'hgbook', namely one branch (one "fork") per repository paradigm everything is simpler.

> * Better documentation. IMHO, hgbook is by far better than
>   http://book.git-scm.com/

And probably better than "Git User's Manual". There are lot of various git-related documentation: "Git Magic", "Git for Computer Scientists", "Git from bottoms up"...

> * Windows support (personally, I do not care)

And I think it is not important for DragonflyBSD.

Besides git _has_ MS Windows support, in the form of Cygwin and in the form of msysGit project. It is still not as full as Linux support (for example git-svn comes to mind), but it is not bad. Well, Mercurial has TortiouseHg, while Git-Cheetah is in very early stages...

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> 
> Mercurial CONS:
> * Less potential than git. Once Ted Tso even said that "git has more
>   legs than mercurial", see
>   http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2007/03/24/git-and-hg/

I agree, and I think it is at least partially because of Git having cleaner design, even if you have to understand more terms at first.

> * Hg is strictly an SCM system while GIT is a content addressable file
>   system that can be used in other ways, hence the name Global
>   Information Tracker (GIT)

Errr... I think you are mislead by tongue-in-cheek backronym, which was created in the beginning, when git had very weak porcelain (i.e. SCM UI).

> * Recently, Hg development seems to have somewhat slowed down. To
>   simply put it, there is not enough room in the world for several
>   similar SCM systems. With git's pace and momentum the other SCMs
>   including Hg are fighting an uphill battle.

The competing _distributed_ version control systems left seems to be Bazaar-NG (Ubuntu), Mercurial (OpenSolaris, Mozilla), Git (Linux kernel, Freedesktop.org, Ruby on Rails people). There are many IDEs, many editors, many web browsers; there is Linux and there are *BSD; I hope that Mercurial would continue to be developed, and not vanish in obscurity like Arch and clones...

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland