From: Brandon Casey Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:07:32 GMT Subject: Re: [VOTE] git versus mercurial (for DragonflyBSD) Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <200810270252.23392.jnareb@gmail.com> Jakub Narebski wrote: > 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