41–50 of 263 posts
My git usage is very basic, my gitconfig has been pretty much untouched for years but on those occasions where I get stuck or hit something I end up searching and usually get through a bunch of posts/comments/sites and wish I was using hg.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also did this. Both in hindsight and at the time, I thought Mercurial had far better tooling. But it was not all amazing: Mercurial’s branching model was very poor, and its sequentially numbered revision system was and remains a very bad design.
I think I liked the Mercurial branching model better than git, due to the branches being a first class record of events. What I did not know is how common the git rebase/clean linear history would become or a desire to change history on merge. Mercurial had bookmarks that were roughly the same as git branches. The linear version numbers were quite useful to reason about and use in places that call for a "number" vers…
And then, when you pull someone else’s in-progress work to inspect it, you end up with their branches showing up with their names and you ended up with revisions 13564-13592 belonging to someone else and showing up in your history graph even when you continue on your own work at revisions 13563 and 13593. I ended up using temporary clones and strip a lot.
git branches, in contrast, are delightfully unobtrusive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I liked the Mercurial branching model better than git, due to the branches being a first class record of events. What I did not know is how common the git rebase/clean linear history would become or a desire to change history on merge. Mercurial had bookmarks that were roughly the same as git branches. The linear version numbers were quite useful to reason about and use in places that call for a "number" vers…
The clean linear history thing is something I never really got, despite using git for 12 years now. I worked with some smart developers whose rule was "rebase if you want, but if too complicated, just merge", and it didn't hurt the delivery or maintainability of the code they wrote.
For a complicated long running feature branch I can see it. Instead of repeatedly merging the root in during development it can be cleaner. Tools aren’t always good at figuring out in a PR what was written and what was caused by those merges from root. And history looks better at the end.
For a short branch that can merge cleanly or perhaps very close to it, I’d kind of rather have the ‘true’ history. I don’t think it’s worth it.
I’ve never understood the “everything must be rebased before every merge” desire.
Anyone know what Matt Mackall is up to these days? He started Mercurial and got people involved early on with a lot of enthusiasm, you could tell he cared about what he created and the people who joined him ("hg crew"). I learned a lot from him on how to think like an engineer and saw him manage different personalities in the project in a kind and sincere way (I think this was around ~2010).
FYI: Matt Mackall is now Olivia Mackall [1], so that can make searching for things harder. Looks like they work at Valve, now? Agreed that they were a really stabilizing and healthy personality in the project, and made a lot of good early decisions, which Mercurial has continually benefited from. Eg: the commitment to backwards-compatibility [2]. [1] https://repo.mercurial-scm.org/hg-stable/rev/d4ba4d51f85f [2] https…
I owe her and the Mercurial community a great debt. The community taught me how to think like an engineer building infrastructure and the importance of backwards compatibility, something I've tried to carry forward in tools like cargo-nextest.
Almost 20 years ago I helped our company choose between Git and Mercurial as the replacement for Subversion. Unfortunately, I helped them make the wrong choice, Mercurial. I say wrong because clearly Git won the war and I haven't used Mercurial since then. However, I still think I made the right choice from a technical perspective; I thought Mercurial was way more user-friendly while providing all the features and pe…
I also did this. Both in hindsight and at the time, I thought Mercurial had far better tooling. But it was not all amazing: Mercurial’s branching model was very poor, and its sequentially numbered revision system was and remains a very bad design.
Almost 20 years ago I helped our company choose between Git and Mercurial as the replacement for Subversion. Unfortunately, I helped them make the wrong choice, Mercurial. I say wrong because clearly Git won the war and I haven't used Mercurial since then. However, I still think I made the right choice from a technical perspective; I thought Mercurial was way more user-friendly while providing all the features and pe…
Another contender is Jujutsu (jj) which allows you to use jj as frontend and use Git as the backend (with the potential to support any backend, e.g. Google's proprietary Piper), with the best ergonomic and the widest availability of hosting solutions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I also did this. Both in hindsight and at the time, I thought Mercurial had far better tooling. I recall checking Mercurial back in the day and being puzzled by the lack of basic features such as the ability to stash changes. I also recalled that the community was dismissive of the lack of such a basic feature, with comments such as users could always create local branches, of even we could perhaps install a module…
It did have a kind of equivalent to stashes in the mq extension, but its interface was a bit esoteric compared to the rest of Hg, from what I remember.
Almost 20 years ago I helped our company choose between Git and Mercurial as the replacement for Subversion. Unfortunately, I helped them make the wrong choice, Mercurial. I say wrong because clearly Git won the war and I haven't used Mercurial since then. However, I still think I made the right choice from a technical perspective; I thought Mercurial was way more user-friendly while providing all the features and pe…
I don't think Git winning a popularity contest is a reason for choosing Mercurial to have been wrong, or unfortunate. Was there some negative consequence from the decision -- either directly from Mercurial itself, or just because over time everyone expected Git, perhaps? (Hopefully this comes across as curious, which it is, and not antagonistic, which its not)
That means pretty much everyone who comes in the door needs Mercurial training, whether formal or informal. You’d get the same effect from still using CVS, SVN, or other things.
That may not be a big issue. If someone understands version control I’d hope they could adapt to another minder pretty fast.
It’s still an issue. There is technically a cost.