8 ms·

For context here, and for people like me who don't follow the development of Mercurial closely enough to realize, mpm is not just some random contributor to Mer

For context here, and for people like me who don't follow the development of Mercurial closely enough to realize, mpm is not just some random contributor to Mercurial, but is in fact Matt Mackall, the original author of Mercurial.

jordigh 11y ago
Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`. I wasn't there to witness this, but I repeat it because it's actually kind of hard to dig up this history. I don't know of a single place that neatly chronicles the whole transition from bitkeeper -> git/mercurial.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. I remember using Mercurial very early on in its lifetime, during my first internship at IBM, because Xen used it. Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows. Unfortunately, Mercurial took longer to develop some of its infrastructure, such as a repository structure optimized for performance, fast branches without making a separate working directory for each, and history editing capabilities. Today, as far as I know, Mercurial does have all of those things (some through plugins). > Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`. Many people (myself included) also used cogito as a crutch for a while longer, until really internalizing the value of the git index, because cogito defaulted to bypassing the index. I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture of making small commits with one logical change each.
  - zeveb 11y ago
    > Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows. Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. In my own case, I really preferred hg's command congruence to SVN; git's deceptive similarity took a long time to get over. > I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture of making small commits with one logical change each. Same here, on both counts. I'd never go back, now, but it did take time to understand the benefits.
    - ngoldbaum 11y ago
      I do the same thing with mercurial's "hg commit -i" interactive interface. There's also a very nice curses interface for interactive hunk selection which is currently behind an experimental config flag but is shipped with the core application.
    - oblio 11y ago
      > Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. That's quite dismissive of Windows...
    - pcwalton 11y ago
      > Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. I didn't see any indication in the parent comment (or in general, really) that Windows support was the cause of Mercurial's difficulty in implementing those features.
      - apetresc 11y ago
        He means that Mozilla devs running Windows led them to adopt Mercurial (which was, in his opinion, a "poor technical decision"). Not that Mercurial made poor technical decisions as a result of supporting Windows.
    - theandrewbailey 11y ago
- schodge 11y ago
  There was no version control on the transition? :)
billsix 11y ago
Why is context needed when the first sentence is "Here it is 2016 and it's been almost 11 years since I started Mercurial." ?
- mst 11y ago
  I thought the same thing. Then I thought about some of the subthreads on the Sun2 bootloader article. Then I recalibrated my cynicism.
- klibertp 11y ago
  I don't know the GP intention, but for people who first look through comments here, before investing time in reading the piece this is a crucial information. I wouldn't read the article if not for this post.
theandrewbailey 11y ago
Thanks for the clarification. Initially, I was thinking mpm was another package manager.

jordigh 11y ago

Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`. I wasn't there to witness this, but I repeat it because it's actually kind of hard to dig up this history. I don't know of a single place that neatly chronicles the whole transition from bitkeeper -> git/mercurial.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. I remember using Mercurial very early on in its lifetime, during my first internship at IBM, because Xen used it. Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows. Unfortunately, Mercurial took longer to develop some of its infrastructure, such as a repository structure optimized for performance, fast branches without making a separate working directory for each, and history editing capabilities. Today, as far as I know, Mercurial does have all of those things (some through plugins). > Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`. Many people (myself included) also used cogito as a crutch for a while longer, until really internalizing the value of the git index, because cogito defaulted to bypassing the index. I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture of making small commits with one logical change each.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows. Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. In my own case, I really preferred hg's command congruence to SVN; git's deceptive similarity took a long time to get over. > I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture of making small commits with one logical change each. Same here, on both counts. I'd never go back, now, but it did take time to understand the benefits.
  - ngoldbaum 11y ago
    I do the same thing with mercurial's "hg commit -i" interactive interface. There's also a very nice curses interface for interactive hunk selection which is currently behind an experimental config flag but is shipped with the core application.
  - oblio 11y ago
    > Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. That's quite dismissive of Windows...
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    > Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions. I didn't see any indication in the parent comment (or in general, really) that Windows support was the cause of Mercurial's difficulty in implementing those features.
    - apetresc 11y ago
      He means that Mozilla devs running Windows led them to adopt Mercurial (which was, in his opinion, a "poor technical decision"). Not that Mercurial made poor technical decisions as a result of supporting Windows.
  - theandrewbailey 11y ago
schodge 11y ago
There was no version control on the transition? :)

billsix 11y ago

Why is context needed when the first sentence is "Here it is 2016 and it's been almost 11 years since I started Mercurial." ?

mst 11y ago
I thought the same thing. Then I thought about some of the subthreads on the Sun2 bootloader article. Then I recalibrated my cynicism.
klibertp 11y ago
I don't know the GP intention, but for people who first look through comments here, before investing time in reading the piece this is a crucial information. I wouldn't read the article if not for this post.

theandrewbailey 11y ago

Thanks for the clarification. Initially, I was thinking mpm was another package manager.