4 ms·

Ask HN: Who's using bzr for version control?

7 points by jwwest 15y ago

I see a lot of push behind git and to a lesser degree, hg. However, bzr remains the read-headed stepchild of the DVCS world. Why?

geophile 15y ago
Beats me. git has a too-steep learning curve and is just cryptic and hostile. svn is too intolerant of slight mistakes, leading to difficult-to-fix situations, and merges don't work very well. We tried both at my day job, and are now very happy on bzr. I also found it really nice for my single-developer spare-time project.
- anix 15y ago
  "git has a too-steep learning curve and is just cryptic and hostile." that is quite untrue. it's more to do w/ unlearning the legacy of central repositories, checkout, checkins, copy-branching, etc - and that is not hard if you're sufficiently pissed off with them :]
veyron 15y ago
git has a specific poster child: the linux kernel for a while, google used hg. what high profile project uses bzr and advertises it? I know the response sounds like a chicken-egg problem, and it is. To gain traction, a prolific company or project needs to use bzr.
- lukaslalinsky 15y ago
  MySQL (and some of its forks) use bzr for development.
- hasenj 15y ago
  Canonical endorses bzr, and uses it for Ubuntu and it's the only supported system on Launchpad afaik.
  - veyron 15y ago
    How many people develop for ubuntu?
squidsoup 15y ago
I believe Canonical use bzr for all their internal projects like Launchpad.
rryan 15y ago
I contribute to Mixxx (http://mixxx.org http://mixxx.org) and it's our VCS. When we made the switch from SVN, we did it mainly for the very nice integration with Launchpad. Without Launchpad it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Also, it's really dog slow compared to git, especially on our very large codebase.
- mitchty 15y ago
  How big of a codebase? And is it all code or a mix of binary data? Finally, have you benchmarked the differences? I'm kinda curious how hg/git/bzr stack up on a real world large codebase.
hasenj 15y ago
I find bzr and hg weird for the same reason that I never understood svn: I don't know what the hell they're doing. Because git is simple in its basic structure I feel like I can understand what's going on. With bzr/hg/svn, I just have no idea what's going on, I have no idea what the tool means by words like "checkout" and "revert" and "update"; they're just too vague.
AlexLa 15y ago
Because there is no GitHub for bzr. I think git gained it's popularity mainly because of GitHub and Launchpad is just not good enough. P.S. Let me know if somebody's going to build a "BzrHub".

7 points by jwwest 15y ago

I see a lot of push behind git and to a lesser degree, hg. However, bzr remains the read-headed stepchild of the DVCS world. Why?

geophile 15y ago

Beats me. git has a too-steep learning curve and is just cryptic and hostile. svn is too intolerant of slight mistakes, leading to difficult-to-fix situations, and merges don't work very well. We tried both at my day job, and are now very happy on bzr. I also found it really nice for my single-developer spare-time project.

anix 15y ago
"git has a too-steep learning curve and is just cryptic and hostile." that is quite untrue. it's more to do w/ unlearning the legacy of central repositories, checkout, checkins, copy-branching, etc - and that is not hard if you're sufficiently pissed off with them :]

veyron 15y ago

git has a specific poster child: the linux kernel for a while, google used hg. what high profile project uses bzr and advertises it? I know the response sounds like a chicken-egg problem, and it is. To gain traction, a prolific company or project needs to use bzr.

lukaslalinsky 15y ago
MySQL (and some of its forks) use bzr for development.
hasenj 15y ago
Canonical endorses bzr, and uses it for Ubuntu and it's the only supported system on Launchpad afaik.
- veyron 15y ago
  How many people develop for ubuntu?

squidsoup 15y ago

I believe Canonical use bzr for all their internal projects like Launchpad.

rryan 15y ago

I contribute to Mixxx (http://mixxx.org http://mixxx.org) and it's our VCS. When we made the switch from SVN, we did it mainly for the very nice integration with Launchpad. Without Launchpad it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Also, it's really dog slow compared to git, especially on our very large codebase.

mitchty 15y ago
How big of a codebase? And is it all code or a mix of binary data? Finally, have you benchmarked the differences? I'm kinda curious how hg/git/bzr stack up on a real world large codebase.

hasenj 15y ago

I find bzr and hg weird for the same reason that I never understood svn: I don't know what the hell they're doing. Because git is simple in its basic structure I feel like I can understand what's going on. With bzr/hg/svn, I just have no idea what's going on, I have no idea what the tool means by words like "checkout" and "revert" and "update"; they're just too vague.

AlexLa 15y ago

Because there is no GitHub for bzr. I think git gained it's popularity mainly because of GitHub and Launchpad is just not good enough. P.S. Let me know if somebody's going to build a "BzrHub".