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My understanding is git’s origin was in reproducing and extending the functionality contained in Bitkeeper due to a crisis with the licensing. The apparent sto

My understanding is git’s origin was in reproducing and extending the functionality contained in Bitkeeper due to a crisis with the licensing. The apparent story of git being a exercise of Linus the 10X programmer digesting and re-imagining ‘SVN’ in 10 days seems non-historical. I think a good deal of the git vs SVN ‘10X special sauce’ was done by the company behind Bitkeeper, a tool already used for kernel source control. Linus built the core in 10 days because the problem was clear and the DVCS solution was already in use via Bitkeeper.

dasil003 9y ago
Yes, I'm aware of that, my intent was not to suggest that Linus invented the DVCS from whole cloth (DARCS preceded git and hg by several years). The point is that moving to an open source VCS had been a topic of discussion for years leading up to the Bitkeeper crisis, and Linus had been very vocal about the unsuitability of the mainstream options, going so far as to say email and tarballs would be preferable. The fact that Bitkeeper precipitated git does not really diminish the accomplishment in my eyes. Remember, Bitkeeper was closed source, and the licensing crisis was precipitated by reverse engineering of Bitkeeper in the broader kernel developer community. Linus specifically set out to build a replacement from first principles and he built an incredible foundation in a very short amount of time. If it was a straight clone that would be one thing, but in reality git is its own thing, and fairly par for the course in terms of a top engineer leveraging past experience to build something better.
- elcritch 9y ago
  It’s good to point out that Linus appeared to nail the core data structures for a successful and performant DVCS in those 10 days. The git UI for the longest time was fairly obtuse yet that seems to have mattered less in this case than that the core foundations were solid as your comment points out.
  - tomcam 9y ago
    Luckily, the Git UI has progressed massively and has graduated to merely obtuse.
    - elcritch 9y ago
      It takes well planned effort to remain obstinately obtuse as thengit UI does. ;) Joking aside, I only use a subset of git functionality which generally suffices. The part that keeps me happy is that the tools for detecting files renames, and diff’ing tools continue to improve and become very useable (despite the diff options being quite archane at times). There was an article a while back discussing how git’s straightforward approach of storing the original data blocks allowed the continued improvement of the diff and rename tracking tools in contrast to others like mercurial or bazaar which tried more sophisticated delta (?) techniques upfront. Wish I could find that article again, but it would support the parent’s premise that choosing the right models and framework make a 10x programmer.

dasil003 9y ago

Yes, I'm aware of that, my intent was not to suggest that Linus invented the DVCS from whole cloth (DARCS preceded git and hg by several years). The point is that moving to an open source VCS had been a topic of discussion for years leading up to the Bitkeeper crisis, and Linus had been very vocal about the unsuitability of the mainstream options, going so far as to say email and tarballs would be preferable. The fact that Bitkeeper precipitated git does not really diminish the accomplishment in my eyes. Remember, Bitkeeper was closed source, and the licensing crisis was precipitated by reverse engineering of Bitkeeper in the broader kernel developer community. Linus specifically set out to build a replacement from first principles and he built an incredible foundation in a very short amount of time. If it was a straight clone that would be one thing, but in reality git is its own thing, and fairly par for the course in terms of a top engineer leveraging past experience to build something better.

elcritch 9y ago
It’s good to point out that Linus appeared to nail the core data structures for a successful and performant DVCS in those 10 days. The git UI for the longest time was fairly obtuse yet that seems to have mattered less in this case than that the core foundations were solid as your comment points out.
- tomcam 9y ago
  Luckily, the Git UI has progressed massively and has graduated to merely obtuse.
  - elcritch 9y ago
    It takes well planned effort to remain obstinately obtuse as thengit UI does. ;) Joking aside, I only use a subset of git functionality which generally suffices. The part that keeps me happy is that the tools for detecting files renames, and diff’ing tools continue to improve and become very useable (despite the diff options being quite archane at times). There was an article a while back discussing how git’s straightforward approach of storing the original data blocks allowed the continued improvement of the diff and rename tracking tools in contrast to others like mercurial or bazaar which tried more sophisticated delta (?) techniques upfront. Wish I could find that article again, but it would support the parent’s premise that choosing the right models and framework make a 10x programmer.