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Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

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Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#231

Post by signal11 »

kemitche wrote: post #120
comex wrote: post #48

Git's biggest flaw is that it doesn't scale. If a new system can fix that without sacrificing any of Git's benefits, I think it can topple Git. It's ironic that Git was popularized in the same era as monorepos, yet Git is a poor fit for monorepos. There have been some attempts to work around this. Google's `repo` command is a wrapper around Git that treats a set of smaller repos like one big one, but it's a (very) le…

I disagree that Git's biggest flaw is its lack of scalability. Cases where git needs to scale tend to be isolated to companies that have the manpower to build a finely-tuned replacement (see: MS, Google). Git's flaws are primarily in usability/UX. But I think for its purpose, functionality is far more important than a perfect UX. I'm perfectly happy knowing I might have to Google how to do something in Git as long as…

> Cases where git needs to scale tend to be isolated to companies that have the manpower to build a finely-tuned replacement (see: MS, Google).

I recollect that for Windows (which also uses git), MS have actually extended git with "Git Virtual File System" rather than replace it[1]. But I do agree that broadly, not everyone needs the scale.

[1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/bharry/the-largest-git-repo-o...

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#232

Post by matsemann »

tazjin wrote: post #225
matsemann wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have probably been happy with their tools for centuries. Just because one cannot imagine something better doesn't mean there's no possibility for it to exist. If anything, this defeatist attitude may prove the author right.

> defeatist attitude This implies that the parent's sentiment about git is negative. At least I personally feel very positively about git and am not missing much from it.

> This implies that the parent's sentiment about git is negative.

No, I meant defeatist as in "I have given up finding something better as it will never exist".

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#233

Post by squiggleblaz »

ken wrote: post #134
frutiger wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you want has nothing to do with git (which is a storage model). You can use arbitrary diff and merge resolution algorithms with git's plumbing, which would give you the AST-aware functionality that you want.

That's like saying DVCS has nothing to do with VCS -- it's just the server model. Every major advance has been accomplished by increasing the scope of version control. Arbitrary diff/merge in Git is a great example of the Turing Tar-Pit. It's possible, but prohibitively inefficient for many things I want to do. You can't add your own types, index, or query optimizations. Today, if I want to store data for my applicat…

Couldn't you store the exported database as sql commands? I'm not familiar with every git hook, but if there aren't enough to automated that I guess you could wrap it.

The slowness of destroying a whole database and then recreate it when checking out should be something you can handle by relying on the diff to generate a series of delete commands and a series of insert commands.

But yeah, I guess committing will be slow if you have a lot of data to export. For the time being, it's a trade off to be made.

[I might consider testing this with my current database project. But I'm using SQLite so I guess that implies a lot less data than Postgres.]

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#234

Post by yodsanklai »

tasuki wrote: post #199

> I worry that Git might be the last mass-market DVCS within my lifetime. The possibility of git being the last mass-market DVCS within my lifetime leaves me with warm fuzzy feelings. Git is simple and elegant, though its interface might not be.

I hope it's the last DVCS, if it can save me the hassle of learning a new one. There is some learning curve, but it works just fine once you know how to use it.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#235

Post by tomesch1982 »

The git internals are good for some kinds of projects but for the actual majority of projects git is a very bad fit. Most people don't get that because they are blind for the much better tools like mercurial and fossil.

The git UI/UX on the other hand is the worst piece of crap ware known to man. This piece of shit has probably destroyed more data than any other tool ever written. People who think that git is any good are obviously wrong and can easily proven wrong. It's sad that git has become the default.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#236

Post by dragonwriter »

alkonaut wrote: post #228
tasuki wrote: post #199

> I worry that Git might be the last mass-market DVCS within my lifetime. The possibility of git being the last mass-market DVCS within my lifetime leaves me with warm fuzzy feelings. Git is simple and elegant, though its interface might not be.

I think it's simple and elegant as a data structure, when what people need and want is something that is (at least also) simple and elegant in its UX and most importantly VERY simple and elegant for the 80/20 use cases. For example a typical question on Stackoverflow is "How do I answer which branch this branch was created from", always has 10 smug answers saying "You can't because git doesn't really track that, bran…

> I think it's simple and elegant as a data structure, when what people need and want is something that is (at least also) simple and elegant in its UX and most importantly VERY simple and elegant for the 80/20 use cases.

That's what UIs (whether CLIs or otherwise) for standardized workflows like git-flow are, IMO.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#237

Post by tomesch1982 »

tasuki wrote: post #199

> I worry that Git might be the last mass-market DVCS within my lifetime. The possibility of git being the last mass-market DVCS within my lifetime leaves me with warm fuzzy feelings. Git is simple and elegant, though its interface might not be.

Git is neither easy not is it really elegant. It is useful for projects like Linux™ but for the vast majority of projects way better tools like mercurial or fossil would be a much better fit.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#238

Post by n0rbwah »

matsemann wrote: post #232
tazjin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> defeatist attitude This implies that the parent's sentiment about git is negative. At least I personally feel very positively about git and am not missing much from it.

> This implies that the parent's sentiment about git is negative. No, I meant defeatist as in "I have given up finding something better as it will never exist".

If the tool you have works well for your use case, looking for and learning to use a "better tool" can be a waste of your time with little benefit.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#239

Post by tomesch1982 »

reissbaker wrote: post #186
kccqzy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mercurial is probably that competitor. Only slightly slower than Git. Works on very large monorepos (as large as Facebook's or Google's monorepo). Very similar workflow as compared to Git, with some minor differences in terminology.

As an FB employee, I use hg regularly (because it is required). I would not use it as a git replacement for non-FB-sized repos. It has some weird design choices (e.g. branching is bad), and it very often requires manual intervention for merges that git performs correctly and automatically. You can get around branching-is-bad by changing your workflows a bit, but you can't get around the bad merges: over time it's lik…

The branching in hg is actually way better than with git. The reason you are confused is probably because you learned the wrong (git) way of branches.

If you want the wacky and unreliable git branching you can use hg bookmarks.

Re: Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

#240

Post by zeofig »

Ace17 wrote: post #158
kemitche wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that Git's biggest flaw is its lack of scalability. Cases where git needs to scale tend to be isolated to companies that have the manpower to build a finely-tuned replacement (see: MS, Google). Git's flaws are primarily in usability/UX. But I think for its purpose, functionality is far more important than a perfect UX. I'm perfectly happy knowing I might have to Google how to do something in Git as long as…

I work for a 40-people game studio. A major limitation of git is how it deals with many "big" (~10Mb) binary files (3D models, textures, sounds, etc.). We ended up developing our own layer over git, and we're very happy ; even git-lfs can't provide similar benefits. This technique seems to be commonplace for game studios (e.g Naughty Dog, Bungee), so certainly git has room for improvement here.

Yeah, git with binary files is not fun. Have you tried git annex?
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