Do you think it’s possible to make a better version control system than Git?
Or is it a solved problem and Git is the endgame of VCS
Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
1–10 of 309 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#2I personally think that Fossil is a good example that's extant and used in serious projects. There's that one called pijul which also looks good in theory, but I haven't worked with it. I think version control in general is a little broken before you even get to the software level, but those are two projects tackling some of the problems. And Fossil, I think, is more suited to the scale most people operate on.
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#3git : version control :: vim : editors
There is definately scope for a beginner friendly UI/UX. Julia Evans has a post lately about confusing aspect of git. Ability to version control large files (like git-lfs) would be a nice addition.
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#4Many tried, few succeded.
SVN - client-server principle, but bad at merging branches
mercurial - one of the competitors after the linix kernel devs searched a new version control system, its users die out, since git is more popular, very similar to git
bazaar - mostly used for ubuntu, since launchpad is only providing bazaar as vcs
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#5I'm sure we can, the question is, can we make an alternative to GitHub? I wouldn't be surprised if there are already several better ones, but I've never looked, because I already know Git, and my chances of convincing anyone to use a better one seem low, and they rarely seem to have as big of an ecosystem.
If it doesn't have multiple clouds providers with pull requests, and at least one of those clouds providers isn't a megacorp, it probably won't be the safe boring choice, unless it's fully P2P.
It needs to be packaged in distros, have GUI integrations, etc.
Fossil looks really cool, I really like how they integrate the wikis and issues. But I don't know anyone who uses it, and the cloud providers seem to be smaller "Could go away any time" companies.
I've never really explored any other VCSes, because none ever seem like they're going to be serious competitors.
I'd be more interested in enhancing Git, but it seems a lot of the most interesting git plugins and extensions aren't updated, like GitTorrent.
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#6Of course there is a room for improvement... One of the biggest issues is usability/user experience: pull, fetch, checkout, commit, push, rebase - what is all this and what is the exact meaning? I need simple English terms for my work - like update and save - nothing more. Why do I need to worry about implementation details and terms? If I can not explain it to my wife, then I can not use it for binary documents which she needs to store in a repo... in this case Subversion is a better version-control-system for her documents... Just SVN Update/SVN Commit - nothing more to learn in Subversion...
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#7Yes, there must be a better solution. Git is (usually) better than the alternatives, but it is far from being good. Especially the discoverability of its features is a mess - arcane command line incantations, magic processes. Sometimes only a prayer helps before running the 12th command you found on stackoverflow in desperation. Once you leave the pull-commit-push-merge-rebase circle, you gotta hope that god helps you, because no one else will (or more like no one else can).
Unless of course you spend time to learn git, but its complexity is closing up to C++. And using a VCS shouldn't require that amount of effort. It should just get out the way (I must admit, git usually gets out of the way, as long as you use only the base commands... but when it gets in the way, that's when the fun starts)
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#8Of course there is a room for improvement... One of the biggest issues is usability/user experience: pull, fetch, checkout, commit, push, rebase - what is all this and what is the exact meaning? I need simple English terms for my work - like update and save - nothing more. Why do I need to worry about implementation details and terms? If I can not explain it to my wife, then I can not use it for binary documents whic…
To be honest, I can’t even imagine what you imagine “git save” and “git update” would even do in an alternate universe.
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#9Jujutsu version control system looks very promising in the way it brings the best of other DVCS'es together and innovates on various concepts. It has been discussed a number of times on HN before.
[0] https://github.com/martinvonz/jj
[1] 4 montsh ago, 261 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36952796
[2] 2 years ago, 228 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30398662
Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?
#10The inner workings of git are not overly complicated. The real problem is git only provides a thin layer on top of the inner workings. It’s not git that needs replacing, (it’s just saving blobs of data) it’s the user interface on top that is confusing. The problem with simplifying the user interface is that abstracting away the complexity is super difficult.