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Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

engineering.secondmarket.com

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Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#11

Post by dneb7 »

astrodust wrote: post #6
compay wrote: post #3

It's 2012, not 2008. Why is the #2 story right now about a company that switched from SVN to Git?

I was wondering if there was something new in here. Instead it's a tale of a company that's been living under a rock for the last four years.

Under a rock? Is git _that_ much better? I used to read about how it didn't need a central repository, yet this article, and github, seem to indicate everyone ultimately wants/needs a central repository.

So git is worth switching just for branching/merging superiority? Maybe I don't do it enough, but svn has never let me down. Or maybe I'm not on a large enough dev team?

Guess I'm really just trying to figure out if git is so amazingly better that I really am under a rock (I'm not seeing that), or if it's more of the "if you're not using {latest hip tech} you're not to be taken seriously" kind of thing that we see so much on HN.

(sorry about new account -- can't find original credentials)

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#12

Post by MattBearman »

compay wrote: post #3

It's 2012, not 2008. Why is the #2 story right now about a company that switched from SVN to Git?

I've only just made the switch. Like most people I was stuck with SVN due to my employer using it, and refusing to update.

Now I'm freelance I've had the time to put into learning Git and I'm glad I did, but the point is there are still a lot of people using SVN, some of whom will switch to Git in the future, and posts like this can be very useful to them.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#13

Post by ronnier »

rollypolly wrote: post #9
compay wrote: post #3

It's 2012, not 2008. Why is the #2 story right now about a company that switched from SVN to Git?

I'd be more interested to hear about companies who switched from Perforce to Git. Perforce seems to be entrenched in more corporate environments.

We are doing that at Amazon. I made the switch a couple months ago but it's up to each team when they'd like to switch. My team is lucky in that we have a couple people who really know Git well.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#14

Post by rimantas »

dneb7 wrote: post #11
astrodust wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if there was something new in here. Instead it's a tale of a company that's been living under a rock for the last four years.

Under a rock? Is git _that_ much better? I used to read about how it didn't need a central repository, yet this article, and github, seem to indicate everyone ultimately wants/needs a central repository. So git is worth switching just for branching/merging superiority? Maybe I don't do it enough, but svn has never let me down. Or maybe I'm not on a large enough dev team? Guess I'm really just trying to figure out if…

Yes, git is that much better. Branching is only part of that. Another part is speed—and especially network speed. Git makes operations, during which in SVN I could go, make some coffee and come back just to find them still running, instananeous. Then there is rebasing. Then there is differntiation between author and commiter. Etc., etc.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#15

Post by solutionyogi »

dneb7 wrote: post #11
astrodust wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if there was something new in here. Instead it's a tale of a company that's been living under a rock for the last four years.

Under a rock? Is git _that_ much better? I used to read about how it didn't need a central repository, yet this article, and github, seem to indicate everyone ultimately wants/needs a central repository. So git is worth switching just for branching/merging superiority? Maybe I don't do it enough, but svn has never let me down. Or maybe I'm not on a large enough dev team? Guess I'm really just trying to figure out if…

Yes, git is THAT MUCH BETTER.

I wish I had time to get in all the details about why git is better but I will leave you with two questions to ask your existing version control system:

1. How fast is your version control system?

Unless you have tried git, you will not realize how painfully slow SVN (or any other VCS which has to talk to server) is. 90% of my git operations take less than a second.

Now, you may say that 'speed' is not an issue. Trust me, it is. Once you have a super fast VCS, you will embrace it as your friend in everyday coding instead of using it at the end of the day. It's something similar to what Google thinks that making website/webapp faster brings in more users.

2. Can your version control handle renames?

There are very few version control systems out there which can handle renames. If you dread renaming files because of SVN, you ought to look at git. BTW, not only can git handle renames without a hitch, it can show you code history across file renames.

Again, you may think that 'renaming' is not an issue. But if you believe that 'naming' is very important for your code and you do re-factoring all the time, you don't want your version control system to dictate how you work.

I can imagine why one may think that git is fad. But after using it for 2 years now, I can not use any other version control system. [And for a background, I have used following version control systems for real proejcts: CVS, VSS, Perforce, Surround SCM, SVN, TFS.]

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#16

Post by exit »

compay wrote: post #3

It's 2012, not 2008. Why is the #2 story right now about a company that switched from SVN to Git?

what you're really complaining about is the voting mechanism around here.

apparently there was enough interest to bump it to the front page.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#17

Post by compay »

dneb7 wrote: post #11
astrodust wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if there was something new in here. Instead it's a tale of a company that's been living under a rock for the last four years.

Under a rock? Is git _that_ much better? I used to read about how it didn't need a central repository, yet this article, and github, seem to indicate everyone ultimately wants/needs a central repository. So git is worth switching just for branching/merging superiority? Maybe I don't do it enough, but svn has never let me down. Or maybe I'm not on a large enough dev team? Guess I'm really just trying to figure out if…

> github, seem to indicate everyone ultimately wants/needs a central repository

Of course you still need some centralization in order to share work with other people. But the more compelling thing about Github is forking, not centralization. With Git you can easily synchronize commits between multiple remote repositories.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#18

Post by lsd5you »

exit wrote: post #16
compay wrote: post #3

It's 2012, not 2008. Why is the #2 story right now about a company that switched from SVN to Git?

what you're really complaining about is the voting mechanism around here. apparently there was enough interest to bump it to the front page.

Surely what he is really complaining about is the people who voted it up. We cannot blame everything on the system.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#19

Post by Osiris »

I just recently switched to Git after joining a new company. The team I'm on was just in the process of switching from SVN to Git, so we were all spending a lot of time online in Pro Git as well as researching various workflows.

I think that we're still not fully taking advantage of Git because the other members of the team tend to commit and push all the time (so the code is backed up) but that makes rebasing and squashing quite difficult.

Git has also allowed us to work better with maintaining feature branches and bug fix branches which helps us to give individual branches to QA for test and only release those features/fixes that have been QA approved. If a feature isn't ready on time for deployment, it just doesn't get added to the integration branch and it'll go out the next release. That's pretty cool.

Personally, I've settled on using SourceTree as a GUI with a fallback to the command-line for certain operations.

Re: Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git

#20

Post by aSig »

dneb7 wrote: post #11
astrodust wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if there was something new in here. Instead it's a tale of a company that's been living under a rock for the last four years.

Under a rock? Is git _that_ much better? I used to read about how it didn't need a central repository, yet this article, and github, seem to indicate everyone ultimately wants/needs a central repository. So git is worth switching just for branching/merging superiority? Maybe I don't do it enough, but svn has never let me down. Or maybe I'm not on a large enough dev team? Guess I'm really just trying to figure out if…

There's a fair few extra features you wouldn't think you would need but you'll discover mainly through using it. We made the switch from svn to git a while back and I can't imagine how we used to get by without stash, cherry-pick, bisect etc. There's more to git than just a distributed repository and better branching for sure.
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