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Why did Git become so popular?

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Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#11

Post by secure »

cross-posting my answer here:

The package "gnuit" (GNU Interactive Tools, a file browser/viewer and process viewer) was called "git" in Debian up until 2009-09-09, while git was called "git-core".

Therefore, a better graph to look at is:

http://qa.debian.org/popcon-png.php?packages=git-core%20git&...

Which shows that the popularity did not rise dramatically (take the green line for the left part until they cross, then take the red line).

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#12

Post by Tloewald »

debacle wrote: post #8
silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

Which tool do you prefer the most?

We assume ClearCase is the worst, right?

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#13

Post by pekk »

silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

BitBucket is not even close to being as popular as GitHub, and it's not as nice for just browsing around, so the network effect is against it: you don't put code on BitBucket to be seen really.

Free private repos are great, of course.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#14

Post by ajross »

silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

This contains the answer for why git won: Mercurial people have "no interest" in it. What that tells me is that you have no interest in working with the community and contributing to other peoples' projects, most of which use git these days. Sure, if you want a SCM for your own team or your own private use, you can make a strong case for hg being "better". But that's not what SCM is for.

Using it in your own ivory tower isn't going to impress anyone for the simple reason that no one sees it. Instead, people look at the broader world of all the interconnected git archives in the linux and web development communities, get excited, pull repos and learn git. There's just no equivalent in the hg community that I see. You guys have walled yourselves off, and it's killing your software.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#15

Post by slashdotdash »

ashishgandhi wrote: post #5
fbuilesv wrote: post #2

I think the current answer fails to mention two important things: 1. GitHub. 2. Linus himself wrote it (the kernel previously used BitKeeper but that never got any real traction AFAIK). Having said that, I think this phrase totally nails it: "If it's good enough for the Linux kernel, it's good enough for you" is a very convincing argument.

GitHub was founded in 2008. The spike is in 2010-01. That's what the question mentions too.

> Just to make clear, this graph show the installation of git on debian systems. Around the time the spike happens the Debian package was renamed from git-core to git. Maybe people found the package easier now that the name reflected the software. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177892

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#16

Post by silverbax88 »

debacle wrote: post #8
silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

Which tool do you prefer the most?

TFS for large scale enterprise, hands-down. But I don't recommend it for small shops. (Expensive, although I know it's free for shops with 5 devs or fewer) simply because code management is easy and you can build automated deployment without having to use anything else (you can script with PowerBuilder, Ant, whatever if you like, though). The issue I've found with that is it's not easy to find people who don't code for a living but understand scripting enough to build automated deployments. I'm also not crazy about TFS' visual displays of branches - ClearCase (which is god-awful in every other way) has the best visual display of code and branches.

Mercurial for anything smaller or startup. Love it. The issue with Mercurial is that you'll need to determine how you want to do automated deploy builds, but the code management is great and using BitBucket + Hg I never have trouble seeing which code I'm working in or resolving conflicts. I actually think Mercurial has the second-best visual branching display.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#17

Post by klibertp »

silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

My personal favorite is Bazaar, but Mercurial is good, too. I also heard very good opinions about darcs, but didn't try it yet.

Mercurial has BitBucket and Bazaar has Launchpad, so they hardly 'loose' to git and GitHub here. There is but one thing that git does better (I'm forced to use git at work) - it's faster, or at least feels faster. Other than that, on the technical side, both Bazaar and Mercurial are I think on par with git and they win hands down in terms of ease of use.

So, yes, I would guess that the cause of git popularity is primarily Linus and then GitHub and then the popularity itself.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#18

Post by silverbax88 »

ajross wrote: post #14
silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

This contains the answer for why git won: Mercurial people have "no interest" in it. What that tells me is that you have no interest in working with the community and contributing to other peoples' projects, most of which use git these days. Sure, if you want a SCM for your own team or your own private use, you can make a strong case for hg being "better". But that's not what SCM is for. Using it in your own ivory to…

As I said, I worked with Git. I am no longer interested in it as a solution. I'm not sure why I (or any programmer) would need to 'get excited' to learn Git. It's pretty easy to understand.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#19

Post by pnathan »

silverbax88 wrote: post #6

Having used ClearCase, CVS, Subversion, TFS, Git and Mercurial, I would have to say it's because not enough people have tried Mercurial. I have no interest in Git, but I think people like GitHub (or maybe don't know about BitBucket)

I have used Mercurial extensively, and I while I find its interface superior to git, I find that git actually models the kind of development I do.

Also, git is accumulating tooling and integration with other tools much more than hg is, afaict.

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