Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why did Git become so popular?

programmers.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#61

Post by wyuenho »

npsimons wrote: post #53

I think the question betrays the authors bias and assumes too much; by claiming that "almost every article comparing mercurial and git" and saying "it seems like Mercurial has a better command line UX", the author is obviously a fan of Mercurial; neither of those points seem to be true. While I can understand the sour grapes at seeing an "inferior" technology win, it's not that clear cut. I haven't used Mercurial eno…

You said you haven't used Mercurial much to really compare, and then you compared, and said git is more flexible, and the CLI difference are negligible. So I think you definitely have a bias towards git.

I use Mercurial and Git every day, and I can tell you there's a marked difference between the usability of Mercurial and Git. Git would become totally unusable if it weren't for stackoverflow and google, while I can figure everything out just from Mercurial's short and sweet help manuals.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#63

Post by garenp »

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…

So you "know" "Mercurial people", yet speak of others as coming from an "ivory tower"? Given that you seem to be in possession of special knowledge, why don't you tell us precisely what "SCM is for"?

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#64

Post by graywh »

jlgreco wrote: post #47
jiggy2011 wrote: post #30

I wonder how much of the time git is in practice used identically to SVN?

Even used like that, there are clear advantages to using git to preform that model rather than SVN. To really get the proper "just like SVN" experience you would have to find a way to make git suck at branches and merging, at the least.

And then make add-commit-push a single operation.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#65

Post by programminggeek »

Because it's awesome?

I personally started using git because github made setting up hosted version control so darned easy and nice. Also, I hated using SVN from my work life experience, so I knew I didn't want to use that on my own projects.

Once I understood the power of git branching there is no way I could ever go back. Also, I tried mercurial and it always felt slower and "worse". Git commands might be cryptic, but it's always felt faster and had a community around it that makes better tools for it.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#66

Post by jiggy2011 »

jlgreco wrote: post #47
jiggy2011 wrote: post #30

I wonder how much of the time git is in practice used identically to SVN?

Even used like that, there are clear advantages to using git to preform that model rather than SVN. To really get the proper "just like SVN" experience you would have to find a way to make git suck at branches and merging, at the least.

I never found actually doing branches and merges in SVN any more difficult than git, not sure what the big differences are?

OTOH not having to do the merges on the shared repo is much better and avoids the "don't checkout HEAD just yet 'cos it's all manor of fucked up right now" problem.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#67

Post by wiremine »

I remember attending an OSCON session on git vs. Subversion back in 2006 or 2007. The presenter's thesis was basically that git was more efficient than subversion when it came to branching.

Near the end he walked through the distributed nature of git. That was the second of third OSCON I attended, and I have never seen, nor have I seen since, that many utterly confused developers in a single room.

At the time I thought it was just a poor presentation.

With the benefit of hindsight, I've realized the presentation was just fine. We, the developers, just had that much baggage from using CSV and Subversion. "What do you mean forking isn't evil!" "What do you mean you can branch like that?"

It feels like, at some point, there was a tipping point of younger developers who didn't have to unlearn subversion. Makes me wonder what other heresies we'll do a 180 degree turn on in the future...

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#68

Post by halefx »

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.

Actually the spike is in 2010-04. I don't know that it's really related, but Drupal began switching from CVS to Git in 2010-03. I know a lot of people (myself included) looked at Git for the first time because of that.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#69

Post by samspot »

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…

A lot of us work on closed-source projects you know. Open source is great, but it isn't the whole world.

Re: Why did Git become so popular?

#70

Post by rimantas »

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 would have to say it's because not enough people have
  > tried Mercurial
Or maybe enough of them tried Mercurial. I know I did, then switched to git and did not look back since.
Post reply on HN