Re: Deciding between Git/Mercurial

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 28, 2009, 08:36 UTC
Message-ID: <94a0d4530909280136s1ff65004q1733bd4ef78bdc07@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <h9nlhj$heq$1@ger.gmane.org>

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Anteru <newsgroups@catchall.shelter13.net> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> I'm currently evaluating DVCS for a project, and we're at a point where
> it comes down to either Mercurial or Git. Right now, I'm advocating for
> Git, while my co-workers like Mercurial, so I'd like to provide some
> good arguments in favor of git. Unfortunately, I'm not a git expert, so
> I hope I can get some help here ...

IMO the key difference between hg and git is the storage model: hg stores deltas, while git stores snapshots. That would mean that certain operations are theoretically faster in git (e.g. checkout, diff) while others faster in hg, although with git's packed format I guess there's no operation faster in hg. This means that it doesn't matter how much hg's python code improves, or if they even re-write parts in C, they will never be able to match git's performance (unless they change the storage model, which essentially means changing the whole design -- won't happen).

All this is just guesses, I've thought about doing some measurements but I haven't had time.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras