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Git won over Mercurial simply due to Github. There were some other minor contributing factors - association with Linus, speed - but they are insignificant compa

Git won over Mercurial simply due to Github. There were some other minor contributing factors - association with Linus, speed - but they are insignificant compared to how popular Gihub was (for good reason) and therefore how many people were exposed to git. The Mercurial alternatives like bitbucket just didn't have the same spread, and we got stuck with year after year of teaching new people a difficult interface.

kasey_junk 8y ago
It’s even more specialized than that git one because github made public repos free & private repos paid. Bitbucket did the reverse. If not for that difference we’d all think of git as that bizarre source control Linus makes the Linux devs use.
georgyo 8y ago
Git won the war before GitHub existed. More projects were switching to git than hg. GitHub was then mirroring open source projects git repos without asking. (Which I think is fine, but ruffled some feathers back then) GitHub could have easily been hghub, but they targeted git because it was already winning.
- pseudalopex 8y ago
  Git was more popular for C, Perl, and Ruby. Mercurial was more popular for Java and Python. It was far ahead on Windows. Google and Atlassian bet on Mercurial well after GitHub existed. The idea that only one could win would have been strange to a lot of people at the time.
sys_64738 8y ago
Linus definitely helped and he pretty much killed cvs (not the drug chain).
- war1025 8y ago
  You mean git killed SVN right? SVN killed CVS in my understanding.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    I still push for SVN when we're doing work that centralization makes a great deal of sense. For example, I look at SVN+puppet to be an exceptional combination... and I really don't need that puppet repo to be distributed. Then again, if I'm working with people in different areas, and want them to have a full reproducible copy of the repo, git it is. I maintain a "use the right tool for the right job". Sometimes the Cathedral wins out, and other times the Bazaar wins out (NO! not the Bazaar source control!).
  - stevekemp 8y ago
    People used SVN, but I'm not sure enough people switched that it killed CVS. SVN seemed like it didn't go far enough to be honest. It wanted to be "atomic CVS", but there were many long-standing issues with SVN.
  - sigzero 8y ago
    SVN is probably the most prolific in the "Enterprise" arena.

kasey_junk 8y ago

It’s even more specialized than that git one because github made public repos free & private repos paid. Bitbucket did the reverse. If not for that difference we’d all think of git as that bizarre source control Linus makes the Linux devs use.

georgyo 8y ago

Git won the war before GitHub existed. More projects were switching to git than hg. GitHub was then mirroring open source projects git repos without asking. (Which I think is fine, but ruffled some feathers back then) GitHub could have easily been hghub, but they targeted git because it was already winning.

pseudalopex 8y ago
Git was more popular for C, Perl, and Ruby. Mercurial was more popular for Java and Python. It was far ahead on Windows. Google and Atlassian bet on Mercurial well after GitHub existed. The idea that only one could win would have been strange to a lot of people at the time.

sys_64738 8y ago

Linus definitely helped and he pretty much killed cvs (not the drug chain).

war1025 8y ago
You mean git killed SVN right? SVN killed CVS in my understanding.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  I still push for SVN when we're doing work that centralization makes a great deal of sense. For example, I look at SVN+puppet to be an exceptional combination... and I really don't need that puppet repo to be distributed. Then again, if I'm working with people in different areas, and want them to have a full reproducible copy of the repo, git it is. I maintain a "use the right tool for the right job". Sometimes the Cathedral wins out, and other times the Bazaar wins out (NO! not the Bazaar source control!).
- stevekemp 8y ago
  People used SVN, but I'm not sure enough people switched that it killed CVS. SVN seemed like it didn't go far enough to be honest. It wanted to be "atomic CVS", but there were many long-standing issues with SVN.
- sigzero 8y ago
  SVN is probably the most prolific in the "Enterprise" arena.