Re: Google Code: Support for Mercurial and Analysis of Git and Mercurial

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 26, 2009, 08:16 UTC
Message-ID: <m363grq13i.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <200904260703.31243.chriscool@tuxfamily.org>

Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> For information, now Google Code supports Mercurial for project hosting:
> 
> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/04/mercurial-support-for-project-hosting.html
> 
> Mercurial was choosen over Git because of this (one year old) analysis:
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis
> 
> There is this article on LWN about the analysis:
> 
> http://lwn.net/Articles/330138/

It is a pity that the choice was based on year old analysis. One year for actively developed and fast moving targets such like Git and Mercurial is ages in terms of development history. But I guess this is unavoidable.

For example periodic "maintenance" (garbage collecting) is nowadays quite automatic in git, with fetching into pack, periodic repacking if number of loose objects is above tthreshold, and "git gc --auto".

Whether Mercurial or Git has better UI and better documentation is IMHO a matter of debate. Git documentation is much better that it was, with "Git User's Manual" and "Git Community Book"; UI also is being improved.

I can't comment on MS Windows support, but AFAIK Mercurial has better support here than Git.

The deciding feature (well, one of deciding features) was the fact that Mercurial has better HTTP support... I guess (it was not obvious from the analysis, but it was hinted at) that Mercurial uses its custom protocol over HTTP, as opposed to "dumb" HTTP protocol support in Git.

Perhaps it is time to restart work on _"smart" HTTP protocol_?

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git