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I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

mercurial-scm.org

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

#111

Post by bsder »

Grishnakh wrote: post #108
krupan wrote: post #97

I'm really surprised by the "git won" mentality that manifests in any discussion of mercurial as of late. It makes no sense. We don't decare "winners" with other tools we use. Do we? Why are we all playing with new programming languages when C won? Or maybe C++ won? Or Java? Did emacs or vim win? Speaking of text, did ASCII win? Which code review tool won? How about continuous integration tools? or build tools? I mea…

It's the old diversity vs. centralization/standardization argument. Too many programming languages leads to too much fragmentation, not enough programmers well-versed in the languages, etc. Most times, we pick a language today based not on how optimized the language is for the problem, but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it. Haskell might be great, but if you're a business trying to build somet…

> but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it

The sheer prevalence of git "tutorials" would suggest that most programmers don't actually know how to use it.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1597/

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

#112

Post by bsder »

wyldfire wrote: post #72
reycharles wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems github and bitbucket were released in the same year.

Yes, it's likely that github had more (or better connected) users at first and then Metcalfe's Law took over.

github catered to some of the big open-source names early.

Of course, now that they've "won". They're basically letting the open-source stuff rot. See the recent complaint by quite a few projects about github and lack of support.

This is the problem with anointing a "winner".

Now we'll have to wait for github's replacement just like we had to wait for SourceForge's replacement.

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

#113

Post by olau »

carussell wrote: post #93
JoshTriplett wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I was able to determine when I evaluated both hg and git is that they are essentially equivalent technically. Today, yes. Significant work went into getting Mercurial's internals up to parity with Git's, and conversely into getting Git's UI up to parity with Mercurial's.

Respectfully, Git still has a long way to go before it achieves parity with Mercurial, or even its state of the art from, say, 2010. Don't discount the effect that familiarity with a tool or process can have on your perception of it. The most succinct explanation of this effect that I know comes from the title of a post on the Light Table blog called, "Pain We Forgot". Coming from a Mozilla-influenced, pre-GitHub-exp…

Mercurial has some warts of it own. Common case of working on something, then wanting to update the repository in the midst of it to get something from a co-worker isn't handled exactly stellar.

So you can shelve. When you have enabled the extension.

If I'm not mistaken, even CVS handled this better.

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

#114

Post by theandrewbailey »

zeveb wrote: post #81
theandrewbailey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. I've never heard from anyone that choosing/using Mercurial was a poor decision. Are you biased?

> I've never heard from anyone that choosing/using Mercurial was a poor decision. I liked hg too, but as the passage of time has indicated choosing it for one's project would have been a mistake, as git has effectively won.

You haven't mentioned why you think Git won. If by "won", you mean "is more popular", then yes, it won. But that criteria alone doesn't make a decision bad. When changing gives you no clear advantage, why change to something more popular?

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

#115

Post by azinman2 »

otabdeveloper wrote: post #35
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).

hg came before git, you have your network effect backwards. The reason git ended up overtaking mercurial is because git is more flexible. Programmers for closed-source enterprise projects worldwide flocked to git because git can be massaged into any existing development process almost painlessly. Mercurial, in contrast, is "opinionated". (Before you mention github -- the timeline here is also backwards, github became…

Time line isn't the same thing as network effect.

GitHub and Linux gave git the network effect.

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

#116

Post by ris »

amadvance wrote: post #21
School-Cotton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I consider the CPython switch from Mercurial to git the final declaration of victory. I still have to understand how CPython could miss the symbolic meaning of this decision.

"I consider the CPython switch from Mercurial to git the final declaration of victory."

Really I think it was bitbucket's total sidelining of hg in favour of git. hg features break regularly on bitbucket and today if you visit bitbucket's home page you're greeted with "Bitbucket is the Git solution for professional teams"

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

#117

Post by acveilleux »

dvdgsng wrote: post #103
zeveb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never heard from anyone that choosing/using Mercurial was a poor decision. I liked hg too, but as the passage of time has indicated choosing it for one's project would have been a mistake, as git has effectively won.

won what?

It has won GitHub, that's mostly it.

Separately, GitHub has won the "place where you share you project code" prize that used to belong to sourceforge.

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

#118

Post by acveilleux »

bsder wrote: post #111
Grishnakh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the old diversity vs. centralization/standardization argument. Too many programming languages leads to too much fragmentation, not enough programmers well-versed in the languages, etc. Most times, we pick a language today based not on how optimized the language is for the problem, but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it. Haskell might be great, but if you're a business trying to build somet…

> but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it The sheer prevalence of git "tutorials" would suggest that most programmers don't actually know how to use it. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1597/

It gets much worse once you step out of the open source software and start up communities.

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

#119

Post by acveilleux »

I believe that Mercurial's greatest flaw is that it is too damn easy to use. Since you don't have to wrap your head around it so damn much to use it, it seems weak, like if it was only slightly better than subversion.

The truth is different and Mercurial is roughly as capable as git but it's easy to miss Mercurial's power where as Git rubs your face in it (less so these days but early on, it was a brain f* to my CVS trained brain.)

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

#120

Post by Karunamon »

bsder wrote: post #111
Grishnakh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the old diversity vs. centralization/standardization argument. Too many programming languages leads to too much fragmentation, not enough programmers well-versed in the languages, etc. Most times, we pick a language today based not on how optimized the language is for the problem, but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it. Haskell might be great, but if you're a business trying to build somet…

> but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it The sheer prevalence of git "tutorials" would suggest that most programmers don't actually know how to use it. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1597/

This comic is shockingly spot on for me and my group. We all know the basics, but only at a "type this to get this result" level. The moment something ridiculous needs to be done like a rebase, I get called, and without fail need to have a few stack overflow tabs open to figure it out.

Git's a phenomenal system, but sometimes part of me thinks it does require a PhD to fully grok.

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