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

From: Brandon Casey <casey@nrlssc.navy.mil>
Date: Oct 27, 2008, 20:07 UTC
Message-ID: <b6jwksWkldU6N726dbI3k3yYE6WL1aXJERb9Oh1lNd8g5zdTavgRew@cipher.nrlssc.navy.mil>
In-Reply-To: <200810270252.23392.jnareb@gmail.com>

Jakub Narebski wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
>> Also, looking at git, git users still have to garbage collect regularly, which 
>> shows to me that the design wasn't really cleaner. 
> 
> Well, they have to a lot less than they used to, and there is 
> "git gc --auto" that can be put in crontab safely.

I think you missed the most convincing argument _for_ explicit garbage collection.

By allowing explicit repository packing, git allows you to delay a cpu intensive operation til later, when time doesn't matter, like at the end of the day right before I go home. It also allows more cpu intensive delta/compression algorithms to be used.

By contrast, mercurial performs deltafication and compression on each commit. So, acceptable commit speed must be weighed against the complexity of the deltafication/compression algorithm and file format.

-brandon