Live data from Hacker News

Bitbucket now rocks Git

blog.bitbucket.org

71–80 of 183 posts

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#71
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question is difficult to answer in the light in which you intended it, because it doesn't really apply to me. I am not so invested in my source control system to say it "rocks". It works for my purposes and maps nicely to my view of how to handle source code--it's less that Mercurial is awesome, it's that I find Git unpleasant to work with. I find Git over-engineered toward the wrong goals; while I don't doubt t…

I don't think user-friendliness should be a primary goal for a version control system. The reason being that this is something we use day in and day out for years, so the importance of the learning curve is dwarfed by the power of the UI and the workflows it enables. When I switched from svn to git (and don't take this to mean I'm comparing svn to hg, because obviously hg is in git's league, not svn's), the learning…

I do think that user-friendliness must be a primary goal for a VCS, because I have to get people who aren't hardcore, balls-to-the-wall programmers to use it if I need to store their data in my tree. Hg can be picked up by those folks in short order and requires no "grokking" beyond what you can read on Spolsky's HG Init in half an hour minutes. (I have in the past worked with designers who were wholly out of their element with anything beyond HTML, CSS, and very simple jQuery-backed JavaScript; expecting them to "grok" their VCS was more of a demand than I wanted to make because I'd have had to teach them.) And, to be honest, I think having to "grok" your VCS is only slightly less ridiculous of a requirement for software to force upon its user than is having to "grok" your text editor. Similarly, is why I don't use vim and do use Sublime Text.

I don't think git's internal logic is more meaningfully flexible than hg's, but, IMO, hg provides a vastly more user-friendly experience. I could be wrong on this, but assuming I'm not--if you can get both, why not get both? =)

(And don't get me wrong--I realize the arguments for rebase as opposed to merge. I reject them for my own projects for reasons that are largely subjective, and prefer a system where they are difficult and not commonplace. It's totally a matter of taste, but one I do feel somewhat strongly about and is what I'm referring to by disagreements in philosophy.)

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#75
post #10

Free unlimited private repos for up to 5 users; with competition like that maybe we'll see github improve it's pricing.

I doubt it. There is no need for them to, they aren't hurting or struggling. Running businesses with "lets offer more for free" and "ohh crap, they offer more for free, lets lower our price" is a race to the bottom. It is actually moves like these that make me question Bitbucket more. How viable is the service long term? Do I want to trust all my own code to them?

[deleted]

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#76
post #49
post #3

As a daily Bitbucket user, I appreciate their efforts. But unfortunately I don't see improvement on navigation. It's quite painful to browse source code via web. If I just want to quickly look at someone's repository, I will make a lot of browsing, and it's just way too slow. Compare it to Github's slick UI: https://github.com/blog/760-the-tree-slider But I am optimistic Bitbucket will change it for the better.

(I'm a Bitbucket developer.) I completely agree that UI's something we need to improve on. I do think we've been making progress: We recently redesigned the commit history page, we've cleaned up the repository and account admin pages, and we've been updating the whole site with a more streamlined look and feel. One of the next big things on our roadmap is redoing the repository header (that thing with all the tabs an…

I am happy to hear this. Thank you! (for the pjax reference and great service)

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#77
Definitely going to give this a go. I have a lot of repos I'd like to keep private, but they're mostly personal projects and not worth paying more money for at GitHub.

Quick question from someone new to Bitbucket:

I have to authenticate every time I push to the repo. I've added my SSH key to the account, but I assume there's some additional configuration, such as how github has you add values for github.user and github.token to your global git config, but I can't find any such info for what those variables need to be for Bitbucket - assuming that's the reason I'm still continually prompted for a password.

Has anyone sorted this out yet or got SSH authentication working with Git & Bitbucket?

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#78
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think user-friendliness should be a primary goal for a version control system. The reason being that this is something we use day in and day out for years, so the importance of the learning curve is dwarfed by the power of the UI and the workflows it enables. When I switched from svn to git (and don't take this to mean I'm comparing svn to hg, because obviously hg is in git's league, not svn's), the learning…

I do think that user-friendliness must be a primary goal for a VCS, because I have to get people who aren't hardcore, balls-to-the-wall programmers to use it if I need to store their data in my tree. Hg can be picked up by those folks in short order and requires no "grokking" beyond what you can read on Spolsky's HG Init in half an hour minutes. (I have in the past worked with designers who were wholly out of their e…

On text editors -- picking up Emacs was one of the hardest thing I ever did, as I had to learn new shortcuts, I had to learn to rely on the keyboard-only and I also had to learn some ELisp just to be able to configure it.

Because Emacs has some problems (it is hard to create new syntax-highlighting definitions, plugins break all the time, ELPA for package management is useless), I did try both Textmate and Sublime Text 2, several times.

But I keep going back to Emacs and personally I don't get how people can stand a text editor that doesn't even have proper UNDO (Textmate) or a text editor that doesn't have a workflow that is totally mouse-free. Emacs is also wonderful because it grows with you. Some things that should be simple are too hard indeed, but at least you can fix that.

Basically me switching to Emacs was similar to when I learned to touch-type. I did suffer, but productivity was increased tenfold in the end.

IMHO, you're not a user to require UI friendliness. The difference between a developer and a user is that users are using these applications casually. But if your day job is depending on a text editor, you should use the text editor that stays the least in your way, and friendliness has nothing to do with it. Ditto for version control.

On a side-note, race-car drivers in general do not use automatic transmissions. That's because they can change gears more efficiently than a computer can and because they don't need to eat sandwiches while driving.

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#79
post #58

I just checked and none of my existing Bitbucket repos have a Git link, nor can I find a way to add Git support from the Admin screen. However when I go to add a new repo Git is an option. Please tell me (frown face) that this feature isn't just for new repos....

When we were prototyping Git support, one of the first things we investigated was having automatic conversion between Hg and Git on the server. We weren't able to get the performance to a level where responsiveness would be acceptable, and maintaining consistency between the two repos was complex. It's something we might revisit in the distant future. As a middle ground, I've been thinking of implementing support for…

I don't care about converting my code, I'll just delete the .hg directories, I care about having to create new repos MyProject2, MyOtherProject2

Re: Bitbucket now rocks Git

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think user-friendliness should be a primary goal for a version control system. The reason being that this is something we use day in and day out for years, so the importance of the learning curve is dwarfed by the power of the UI and the workflows it enables. When I switched from svn to git (and don't take this to mean I'm comparing svn to hg, because obviously hg is in git's league, not svn's), the learning…

I do think that user-friendliness must be a primary goal for a VCS, because I have to get people who aren't hardcore, balls-to-the-wall programmers to use it if I need to store their data in my tree. Hg can be picked up by those folks in short order and requires no "grokking" beyond what you can read on Spolsky's HG Init in half an hour minutes. (I have in the past worked with designers who were wholly out of their e…

Yeah, I don't have those people in any meaningful capacity. If I did then hg would immediately be a strong contender.

With regards to the philosophical difference, I see where you're coming from. This is the reason I use OS X instead of Linux for instance, it's more important for me to have a simple and usable GUI than to have ultimate control and flexibility. With text editors and version control systems I don't feel that way though. As a matter of fact, I do use vim, and I don't think it's ridiculous in the least to use tools that require "grokking" for one's core competency. I'm not saying everyone should use these tools, but I do believe in my heart that the power of vim can not be equalled by a more user-friendly text editor. Sure you can have a more powerful IDE for language X or Y, but I doubt any of those will be able to stick around and grow with me over the dozens of languages I will use over the course of my career. Since I plan to use these tools for decades (unlike programming languages themselves), the importance of newbie-friendliness approaches zero. That's not to say the UI doesn't matter, but just that the factors that matter are the ones that are applicable to the master rather than the apprentice.

Post reply on HN