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Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

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Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#31

Post by rhabarba »

StavrosK wrote: post #21
rhabarba wrote: post #2

Fossil's new(ish) semi-automatic bidirectional interaction with Git mirrors has finally made Mercurial replaceable for me. However, it is hard to ignore that the IT world has mostly decided to settle with whatever is the most commonly used right now, no matter if it is actually the best solution - so at least when it comes to DVCS, the war seems to be over.

How does that interaction work? Last I checked, it wasn't great or it was too much of a hassle (I don't remember exactly).

Exporting to Git: You set a "Git mirror" once, optionally with a remote URI, and call fossil's export routine. Example: I wrote a cronjob that runs once every night that does nothing but update my Git mirrors from the current Fossils.

    cd $FOSSILDIR
    for f in *; do
        /usr/local/bin/fossil git export -q -R $f
    done
Importing works... similarly. :-)

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#32

Post by foota »

colechristensen wrote: post #10
consultutah wrote: post #6

SVN seemed irreplaceable not so long ago and CVS before that and RCS before that... When someone comes up with something demonstrably better and gets the right people to start using it, people will switch over.

SVN also had serious difficulties and performance limitations which git does not. Git is somewhat confusing to use, but not enough so that anyone really cares all that much (besides a few people who really care) and that is not a recipe for easy replacement. There were/are slightly less confusing version control systems (mercurial) but they didn't catch on for whatever reason.

Doesn't git fall apart for long wide checkouts and large files?

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#34

Post by zestyping »

It feels that way, and it's heartbreaking that our entire species ended up locked into a tool with such a horrible interface.

In a way, the git monopoly is worse than Windows or x86 or IPv4, because it's not just a piece of technical infrastructure. Its arcane commands and its branching model have infected all of our brains. You can choose a different editor, you can choose a different operating system, but for as long as we all live, we will never escape the fact that "git reset" does a half a dozen confusingly different operations, or that renaming cannot be tracked, or that most users don't fully understand most of the commands they regularly use.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#36

Post by pbiggar »

I'm working on a git replacement, in a way. The thing that makes git powerful is that its just text. Git is probably the most powerful thing for code as text. When code no longer is just text (and by "text" I mean bytes on disk, not that we're switching to coding with emoji or VR) you get to do more powerful stuff.

Our plan in Dark (https://darklang.com) is to combine all the different ways that people "branch" (deployment, feature flags, git branches, staging/dev/prod environments) into a single concept. And then we also plan to combine all the ways to "comment" (PRs, slack messages, commit message, code comments) into a single concept.

Not sure if you'd call that a git replacement, but it's a displacement of sorts - the function of git is replaced by non-git.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#37

Post by dickjocke »

ken wrote: post #19

Every version control system that's become dominant in my lifetime became popular because it fixed a major obvious flaw in the previous dominant system (RCS, CVS, SVN). From where I sit, Git has a couple obvious flaws, and I expect its successor will be the one that fixes one of them. The most obvious (and probably easiest) is the monorepo/polyrepo dichotomy.

Can you explain more about that? I've worked with both and I feel like monorepo is kinda a pain, but I dont understand where Git fits in to either directly. Seems like it just snapshots files.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#38

Post by hn_acc_1 »

ken wrote: post #19

Every version control system that's become dominant in my lifetime became popular because it fixed a major obvious flaw in the previous dominant system (RCS, CVS, SVN). From where I sit, Git has a couple obvious flaws, and I expect its successor will be the one that fixes one of them. The most obvious (and probably easiest) is the monorepo/polyrepo dichotomy.

I don't see any obvious flaws with Git.

The monorepo/polyrepo discussion exists apart from your choice of version control system and has little to do with Git, as far as I can tell

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#39

Post by 0_gravitas »

rhabarba wrote: post #2

Fossil's new(ish) semi-automatic bidirectional interaction with Git mirrors has finally made Mercurial replaceable for me. However, it is hard to ignore that the IT world has mostly decided to settle with whatever is the most commonly used right now, no matter if it is actually the best solution - so at least when it comes to DVCS, the war seems to be over.

But this doesn't hold for things like languages, adoption of new tech over old (no matter how prominent it is) happens all the time, but it usually starts at the small scale, like start-ups. It definitely takes a hell of a long time, and it would probably never usurp 100% of gits usership (or even 50%), but it will probably be used in some capacity. Of course Java's still as big as ever, but we have seen an uptick in relatively new languages still coming into use (I think of things like Elm/Elixir).

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#40

Post by DecoPerson »

> 1. Metcalfe's original Ethernet has been replaced a bunch of times...

These replacements were seemless to users. New Ethernet adapters were compatible with at least the previous spec. The Git import/export of Fossil is not seemless at all. It actually adds quite a bit of complexity if you want to introduce it your regular workflow.

> 2. Microsoft's long-term stalwarts Windows and Office are dying...

Citation needed.

> 3. Adobe's having a hard time hanging onto its old market...

Citation needed.

> 4. IPv4 still won't go away...

There is a lot of hardware out there that only works with IPv4. The costs and risks of switching your org's internals, product or services from IPv4 to IPv6 are phenomenally higher than switching your org from Git to Fossil or adding Fossil support to your product or service.

If Fossil is truly superior to Git and people are not switching to it, then there's no hope they'll switch to IPv6. Not until the cost of not switching is greater.

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