I agree that it is useless to bash subversion: I know lots of business that still run it and are happy users. I tend to support the article's claim that agile a

I agree that it is useless to bash subversion: I know lots of business that still run it and are happy users. I tend to support the article's claim that agile and distributed (d'oh..) development suits the git/bazaar/mercurial model more, but that's no reason to denounce the subversion project as a single 'mistake'. Regarding the long string vs. revision though: That's the reason you'd usually refer to a named thing (tag, head of branch) + a qualifier. Using gitosis as an example repository (just had a clone of it around): $ git describe 73a032520493f6b4186185d4826d12edb5614135 release/0.2-47-g73a0325 $ git name-rev 73a032520493f6b4186185d4826d12edb5614135 73a032520493f6b4186185d4826d12edb5614135 master~2 i.e. that commit is 47 commits after the commit referenced as release/0.2 and 2 before master.