I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#11

Post by schodge » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #3

andrewla wrote: post #2

For context here, and for people like me who don't follow the development of Mercurial closely enough to realize, mpm is not just some random contributor to Mercurial, but is in fact Matt Mackall, the original author of Mercurial.

Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`. I wasn't there to witness this, but I repeat it because it's actual…

There was no version control on the transition? :)

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#12

Post by zeveb » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6

jordigh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`. I wasn't there to witness this, but I repeat it because it's actual…

> Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. I remember using Mercurial very early on in its lifetime, during my first internship at IBM, because Xen used it. Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Me…

> Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows.

Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions.

In my own case, I really preferred hg's command congruence to SVN; git's deceptive similarity took a long time to get over.

> I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture of making small commits with one logical change each.

Same here, on both counts. I'd never go back, now, but it did take time to understand the benefits.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#13

Post by nailer » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is.

git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#14

Post by restalis » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:01 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #13

hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is. git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

If people would judge a tool on its technical merits, that may be true. However, a lot of people that adopted git hardly needed/used git's improvements (in their one man projects).

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#15

Post by ngoldbaum » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #12

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. I remember using Mercurial very early on in its lifetime, during my first internship at IBM, because Xen used it. Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Me…

> Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows. Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. In my own case, I really preferred hg's command congruence to SVN; git's deceptive similarity took a long time to get over. > I originally saw the index as an o…

I do the same thing with mercurial's "hg commit -i" interactive interface. There's also a very nice curses interface for interactive hunk selection which is currently behind an experimental config flag but is shipped with the core application.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#16

Post by School-Cotton » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #13

hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is. git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

There are tons of companies using mercurial including some of the biggest ones. It's not really accurate to imply that Git won and Mercurial is dead.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#17

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

This is a gutsy thing to do with a piece of software that has been part of your life for over a decade. Mad props to mpm.

Up until Blekko I had pretty much been a perforce user (both at NetApp and at Google) and git was "that weird system you had to use to check in kernel changes". Blekko used Mercurial and I had no opinion as I had no experience. But over the years using hg at work and then starting up a github account to learn git, I saw the writing on the wall. Hg was the betamax of source code management systems. Clean, elegant, reliable, and not mainstream.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#18

Post by ska » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #13

hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is. git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

Except unlike your examples, hg was contemporaneous with git.

Git may have won the network effect benefit but 10 years ago it was not at all clear how it would shake out. Mercurial did gain enough users (and large users) to remain relevant, unlike some of the other options at the time.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#19

Post by soperj » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #16

nailer wrote: post #13

hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is. git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

There are tons of companies using mercurial including some of the biggest ones. It's not really accurate to imply that Git won and Mercurial is dead.

Yes, For instance, Java.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#20

Post by rjbwork » Mon, Jan 25, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #13

hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is. git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

TBH, I prefer Hg regardless. I only use git when forced to to interact with a project on GitHub. As for replacement, I don't think anyone wants that. Two widely used open source DVCSes is a great thing.