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this is a flawed comparison. The major competitor to git is mercurial, and while git has won the popularity contest mercurial is still in use across large proj

this is a flawed comparison. The major competitor to git is mercurial, and while git has won the popularity contest mercurial is still in use across large projects. Java/openjdk moved from mercurial to git in the 2021 time frame. I don't believe fossil has ever been used on a scale as large as openjdk from an organizational point of view (thousands of participants in the ecosystem, across dozens of jdk implementations, across more than a dozen hardware platforms, etc) Fossil as used in sqlite vs mercurial/git openjdk repos as used across the java ecosystem - I think java is one of the projects where platform support is at least as wide as sqlite, if not greater, and the codebase is much larger and more sprawling. Facebook has moved on from mercurial as well, and it's not to fossil. Fossil is a great tool, but seeing it as "one or the other" vs git isn't useful. In particular, this guide on the fossil website is a guide for users wanting to use fossil, so git is not the only competitor, but for the purposes of fossil adopters, that web page is a great resource!

themerone 4y ago
Where did you hear Facebook is dumping Mercurial. Last I heard they were using Rust to optimize Mercurial.
- sbuttgereit 4y ago
  Meta having moved on from Mercurial may be a factually true comment, but it looks like they still have fondness for Mercurial's ways: https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden
- hinkley 4y ago
  I don't have any special knowledge of this, but it's possible at large companies for both to be going on. The people who don't like the tool move away, and the people who like it try to address some of the complaints to try to dissuade other people from jumping ship, and if they're very good at it, possibly convince others to come back.
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  As someone who kept track of this from the outside, my understanding is that Mononoke, which was that "Mercurial server written in Rust," eventually diverged from Mercurial proper, and is now a new SCM called "eden". It's also no longer a DVCS.
  - _old_dude_ 4y ago
    It is still an incremental/lazy DVCS, the first checkout does not download the whole repository, but for most users it looks like a DVCS.
    - steveklabnik 4y ago
      Gotcha, I don't know about the details, I just know that their readme states very plainly that "Despite having originally evolved from Mercurial, EdenSCM is not a distributed source control system."
danpalmer 4y ago
Big tech companies often use Mercurial because it's similar enough to git that they can use much of the existing skillset of their engineers, while also modular and easy to customise to allow them to back it on to their custom source control systems.

themerone 4y ago

Where did you hear Facebook is dumping Mercurial. Last I heard they were using Rust to optimize Mercurial.

sbuttgereit 4y ago
Meta having moved on from Mercurial may be a factually true comment, but it looks like they still have fondness for Mercurial's ways: https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden
hinkley 4y ago
I don't have any special knowledge of this, but it's possible at large companies for both to be going on. The people who don't like the tool move away, and the people who like it try to address some of the complaints to try to dissuade other people from jumping ship, and if they're very good at it, possibly convince others to come back.
steveklabnik 4y ago
As someone who kept track of this from the outside, my understanding is that Mononoke, which was that "Mercurial server written in Rust," eventually diverged from Mercurial proper, and is now a new SCM called "eden". It's also no longer a DVCS.
- _old_dude_ 4y ago
  It is still an incremental/lazy DVCS, the first checkout does not download the whole repository, but for most users it looks like a DVCS.
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    Gotcha, I don't know about the details, I just know that their readme states very plainly that "Despite having originally evolved from Mercurial, EdenSCM is not a distributed source control system."

danpalmer 4y ago

Big tech companies often use Mercurial because it's similar enough to git that they can use much of the existing skillset of their engineers, while also modular and easy to customise to allow them to back it on to their custom source control systems.