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I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

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Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#241

Post by BlackFingolfin »

A bit off-topic, but: I am somewhat confused by the claim “Subversion was created by Jim Blandy”. I was around back then, and the names I think of when it comes to “who created Subversion” are Ken Fogel, Ben Collins-Sussman, and Mike Pilato. And certainly many other people, including Jim Blandy. My recollection seems to be supported by e.g. https://news.apache.org/foundation/entry/the-apache-software... and also by looking at the early subversion repository history and mailing list posts.

But I was only a bystander (and early adopter), so maybe something went on "behind the scenes" that warrants this attribution? Or maybe it is a just a bit careless and was meant to be more like "... he was one of the creators", which one probably could justify.

Coincidentally, I just checked the Wikipedia page for Subversion and was surprised that there is basically nothing on the history of Subversion and who created it, which I find sad.

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#242

Post by johnwalkr »

oktwtf wrote: post #42

My only experience with Mercurial was in game development. What’s used these days in arenas where large file versioning is needed? I think the ultimate answer is maintaining an asset stack containing files that allow for inherit diff chunks or however that might be described.

There's gitLFS but it requires some discipline to use.

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#243

Post by alex_smart »

WorldMaker wrote: post #217
G3rn0ti wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIT is a tool. Like a swiss army knife, it looks tricky and you need some experience to master all what it provides. But you never actually need everything and, surely, you should also shy away from features if you do not really need them. In this respect GIT is a bit like Perl or C++. You have to apply some discipline to avoid unnecessary complexity. Personally, I have never used GIT's "octopus" merge support but I…

I like the in-progress `git checkout` split to `git switch` and `git restore`. (switch and restore are still marked "experimental" in the official documentation in case their arguments change again, but in my experience they are already pretty dependable.) It's much less likely to accidentally do the wrong thing with either of the two replacements. That's one of the things that I think if that split had been done yea…

I like it too, unfortunately it will take decades before books, tutorials and google search results can catch up.

It is the same fate as any cli application that needs to maintain backwards compatibility because it is used both by humans and programmatically as part of scripts. My favorite example of this dd. Most tutorials still show using dd against /dev/sda1 etc instead of using device names as humans should, and meanwhile people keep shooting themselves in the foot.

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#244

Post by grey_earthling »

jamienicol wrote: post #233
grey_earthling wrote: post #199

Switching to Git makes sense, but choosing GitHub is diametrically opposed to what Mozilla claim their principles are — specifically principle 6 of the Mozilla Manifesto: “The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralised participation worldwide.” => https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/manifesto/ In future it won't be…

> In future it won't be possible to contribute to Firefox without a Microsoft account What makes you think that?

If I understand correctly, they're moving development to GitHub, and not hosting their own git servers. So you'd need a GitHub (Microsoft) account to merge a change to the code.

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#245

Post by CRConrad »

guenthert wrote: post #174
acdha wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mercurial also missed the window on performance and safety. If you started using it around 2009 or so, Hg was notably slower for daily use and a lot of people recommended using extensions to match Git features but those extensions were not stable (Hg and RCS are the only VCSes I’ve seen require data to be recovered from a backup due to normal usage). There’s a meme that Git is hard to use but I think it’s conflating…

> There’s a meme that Git is hard to use but I think it’s conflating the challenges of getting used to version control at all Not sure about that. Git certainly doesn't make it easier by idiosyncratic use of terms and behavior. Why does 'pull' imply 'checkout'?

Why should the word "checkout" imply anything particular? (Except leaving and paying for your hotel room?)

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#246

Post by CRConrad »

lmm wrote: post #99
Blackthorn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That change was so dumb. Mercurial support was the bit that put them as something different from github. Once they didn't have it anymore, why would anyone use them at all?

They still have a much better PR/review workflow than github. (Imagine github if reviewing showed changes since your last review by default, and it worked, and you didn't have to make junk comments to get something to count as a review, and comments didn't get lost).

You're talking Web site, not version control system.

Annoys the fuck out of me, this conflating git with GitHub.

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#248

Post by CRConrad »

stonewhite wrote: post #234
alex_smart wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially, the problem with git is - it is a tool that is simple in its internals, but with a complex/confusing UI. The only way for someone to feel somewhat in comfortable with git is to have a good conceptual model for how it works internally. Once you have that mental model, you feel like a magician with git, but for beginners, it is a source of endless confusion and fear.

I think the idiosyncratic command names are rooted in the fact that git is designed as a peer to peer distributed system as opposed to how it is generally used right now, the server/client workflow. Github even follows and adds to this tradition with the always weird sounding "pull request", since the pull request is normally a mail to a mailgroup with the description of the changes and an actual request to pull that…

> Also, the obligatory joke "git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space"

The scary thing about that one is that I still don't know whether it's just a joke, or if it's the "it's funny because it's true" kind of joke.

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#249

Post by lmm »

CRConrad wrote: post #246
lmm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have a much better PR/review workflow than github. (Imagine github if reviewing showed changes since your last review by default, and it worked, and you didn't have to make junk comments to get something to count as a review, and comments didn't get lost).

You're talking Web site, not version control system. Annoys the fuck out of me, this conflating git with GitHub.

> You're talking Web site, not version control system.

Yes, because we're talking about comparing BitBucket and GitHub when both are using git. Did you reply to the wrong comment?

Re: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

#250

Post by CRConrad »

lmm wrote: post #249
CRConrad wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking Web site, not version control system. Annoys the fuck out of me, this conflating git with GitHub.

> You're talking Web site, not version control system. Yes, because we're talking about comparing BitBucket and GitHub when both are using git. Did you reply to the wrong comment?

> Did you reply to the wrong comment?

Naah, just misunderstood the context,I think. :-)

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