8 ms·

Git is exploding

199 points by davvid 15y ago

CGamesPlay 15y ago
As a ratio, subversion has more people who use it recently than git does. Interesting, you would think that if people were using git, they would be using it much more frequently than subversion (due to local commits).
- btn 15y ago
  "votes" is not a count of the number of uses, just that it has been used at least once in the last 30 days.
  - pekk 15y ago
    So someone who frankly hates git and just uses it to clone a repo someone else made with git, while keeping all their own code in other systems, will be measured as 'voting for' git. Personally, I think both git and hg are broken in different ways, but either still beats svn. Why do git users (as it seems to me) constantly evangelize their product over all others?
    - iain_nl 15y ago
      That doesn't sound weird: If you're happy with a tool, you will tell people to try it and be happy with it too.
- sbarre 15y ago
  I wonder how many people use git primarily for "git clone <github url>" and that's about it? I have to admit we still use svn at work (although I've started using git at home on personal stuff) but at the moment the most frequent task I use git for is still simply cloning stuff from github.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    At work, before we switched to Git, I used the git-svn bridge. It feels kind of hackish, svn-externals don't work and working with remote branches is doable but you have to be careful when merging ... that being said, I did extensive work with local/remote branches with git-svn and I never saw anybody actually branching / merging in SVN. I would never go back to SVN. And this is not a zealot-thing in which I'm stating an opinion to protect an investment -- Git is so much better that it isn't even funny.
    - sbarre 15y ago
      I agree I prefer git (and also agree that 99% of svn usage in our environment doesn't involve any merging), I think it's just that svn is filling our need for a remote backup/storage for the source code so we're sticking with that for now. That said we are a very small team and all in the same office so it hasn't been an issue. I suspect we will slowly start moving new projects over to git though.
    - nupark2 15y ago
      Git is so much better that it isn't even funny. To this day, I've yet to hear an argument for git's superiority that wasn't predicated on: - The assumption that hiding your work in a local branch is somehow a general feature instead of being detrimental to communication and optimized for Linux's development model, or - Based on a 2003-era understanding of SVN and its support for merge tracking, branch switching, etc. I keep hearing a lot of enthusiasm but not much to back it up. Do you have a different take than the above?
  - div 15y ago
    We use svn at work too, but pretty much all developers have switched to git-svn. People used to working with tortoise or versions for mac still use vanilla svn, which is a big reason of why it's kept around.
jessedhillon 15y ago
Can someone offer an explanation as to the sudden explosion in git's popularity in early 2010?
- Titanous 15y ago
  GitHub?
  - dbro 15y ago
    not likely. see http://siteanalytics.compete.com/github.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/github.com/ and http://www.google.com/trends?q=git%2C+mercurial%2C+svn%2C+github&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://www.google.com/trends?q=git%2C+mercurial%2C+svn%2C+gi...
- aaronsw 15y ago
  I think it's partly an artifact: due to a naming conflict, the git package in Debian used to be named "git-core" and was renamed "git" around then.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Groxx 15y ago
    Looks like that might be the case, if you combine the graphs of git-core and git, you get a roughly-exponential growth shape: http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git+git-core&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git+git-core&...
    - mlinksva 15y ago
      http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git++git-core+mercurial+bzr+darcs+cvs+subversion+monotone&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git++git-core... With CVS, darcs, monotone also interesting.
charlieflowers 15y ago
I wonder where TFS would be on this graph. Not that I think it competes well on merit with these others, but it still has some market forces pushing in its favor. It would be interesting to know how it compares.
- dfc 15y ago
  TFS?
  - johkra 15y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server
- dfc 15y ago
  TFS would not even be a blip on this graph;) Assuming tfs is not toyota financing services it appears tfs is microsoft's souce code management system and therefore is most likely not going to show up on debian's popcon.
- amcintyre 15y ago
  I think you might need a semilog-y scale to be able to see it.
- dbattaglia 15y ago
  This is just a guess, but I get the feeling their market share is probably not too large. We use it at my current job, and I actually enjoy using it. The integration build system combined with work item tracking and testing is nice if you have the ability to tailor your companies workflow to the "TFS way" (we are only partially there, still tracking bugs in our legacy intranet site). That said, it truly is a beast to setup/configure/maintain, to the point where I can't imagine any small MS shop bothering (esp. ones w/o a partner license and decent inhouse servers and possibly a build/deployment guy). My last employer was still on sourcesafe (shudder!) when I left last year, and I'd bet they'll eventually go with something from SourceGear or Seapine before heading down the TFS path.
btn 15y ago
"bazaar" should be "bzr". It's important to note that this graph is generated with data collected from people who have the popularity-content Debian package installed [1]. The "vote" metric it provides is probably a more accurate method for comparing which of the packages are in active use (it records accesses of the package's binaries in the last 30 days). [1]: http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.debian.org/
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mahmud 15y ago
I actually heard this: "Linus Torvalds, the creator of Git". That's like saying "George Lucas, director of American Graffiti".
- weaksauce 15y ago
  To be fair it's more like George Lucas, director of Star Wars ep. 1 if we are going chronologically.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Let's be fair to Git. It's more like George Lucas, producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  - knome 15y ago
    George Lucas, founder of Industrial Light and Magic.
  - suivix 15y ago
    It was Sun who created Jar Jar.
- dilap 15y ago
  I dunno, git spawned a revolution in how we think of version control (even mercurial came out of the initial discussions of git); that's a pretty big deal.
  - maaku 15y ago
    Distributed version control existed long before git, and any monotone enthusiast will tell you Torvalds got it wrong.
    - dilap 15y ago
      Fair point. How about, git spawned a revolution in how the masses think of version control? I've never used monotone, but my vague impression is it was indeed influential / ahead of its time, but didn't have enough of a focus on performance to really catch on. But that's totally uniformed speculation on my part :) (And certainly kernels existed long before Linux... ;)
teflonhook 15y ago
I don't think this is an accurate representation of what is going on because market share is not being taken from the others.
- Palomides 15y ago
  pretty sure any developer is likely to have several of these installed; I know I've needed to install them to pull stuff from various open source repositories, regardless of the fact I use git for personal projects
  - derpapst 15y ago
    Indeed. E.g., I am using git for more projects than I use mercurial. To these projects, however, I just submitted a limited number of change sets. Most heavily I am using mercurial instead, which I also would choose for future projects. Maybe it would more accurate to measure the number of submissions per time interval.
dfc 15y ago
I am looking forward to seeing a graph of gnome3/kde/awesome/xmonad a couple of months after gnome3 hits testing.
- lloeki 15y ago
  Throw in XFCE in that list for those missing Gnome 2 and can't stand Gnome 3 nor Unity.
  - windsurfer 15y ago
    I'm one of them ;)
  - dfc 15y ago
    That was kind of the point...
rizumu 15y ago
Mercurial can be installed as a python package, but git is almost always installed as a OS package.
duodecim 15y ago
Another explanation could be that some packages started having Git as a requirement or dependency. I seem to remember there used to be a package related to the KDE desktop that required the SVN client. I'm not saying Git isn't becoming increasingly popular, but strange jumps might be explained by dependencies or renames, too.
- sagarm 15y ago
  The "vote" metric measures actual use, not just installs. See the bottom of this page: http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.debian.org/
jentulman 15y ago
I'd like to suggest that git growth, enhanced by the network effect of github, might also be down to the the ease of entry into using version control provided by the excellent freely available documentation and tutorials. I'm a one man team, by no means a guru but a competent coder, and git was the first version control system where I could make it past the documentation and get to actually using it day to day. I knew I should be using something, git was the something that made learning and implementing it very low cost.
edwingustafson 15y ago
indeed.com's Job Trends shows Subversion still king, Git growing, and Mercurial holding its own. Subversion, Git, Mercurial Job Trends http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Subversion%2C+Git%2C+Mercurial&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Subversion%2C+Git%2C+Mercu...
based2 15y ago
thanks lt, all and github
peteforde 15y ago
Where could I get ahold of the stats tables used to generate these graphs?
- miztadux 15y ago
  All the links are on Debian popularity contest front page: http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.debian.org/
civilian 15y ago
I took the suggestions and re-made the graph: bazaar -> bzr, git-core added, and only votes used. http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=subversion+git+git-core+mercurial+bzr+&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=subversion+gi...
sunils34 15y ago
i <3 gnuplot
nirai 15y ago
Git's growing popularity is not an artifact of some packaging decisions by Debian. See Google insights for search: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-5&q=git%2Csubversion%2Cmercurial%2Cbzr%2Cmonotone&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-5&q=git%2Cs...
joeycfan 15y ago
I saw this coming. Git is one of the greatest pieces of software ever. I can't imagine working without it ever again. All these git improvers like Mercurial are just gilding the lilly. Now we all owe Linus TWICE.

199 points by davvid 15y ago

As a ratio, subversion has more people who use it recently than git does. Interesting, you would think that if people were using git, they would be using it much more frequently than subversion (due to local commits).

btn 15y ago
"votes" is not a count of the number of uses, just that it has been used at least once in the last 30 days.
- pekk 15y ago
  So someone who frankly hates git and just uses it to clone a repo someone else made with git, while keeping all their own code in other systems, will be measured as 'voting for' git. Personally, I think both git and hg are broken in different ways, but either still beats svn. Why do git users (as it seems to me) constantly evangelize their product over all others?
  - iain_nl 15y ago
    That doesn't sound weird: If you're happy with a tool, you will tell people to try it and be happy with it too.
sbarre 15y ago
I wonder how many people use git primarily for "git clone <github url>" and that's about it? I have to admit we still use svn at work (although I've started using git at home on personal stuff) but at the moment the most frequent task I use git for is still simply cloning stuff from github.
- bad_user 15y ago
  At work, before we switched to Git, I used the git-svn bridge. It feels kind of hackish, svn-externals don't work and working with remote branches is doable but you have to be careful when merging ... that being said, I did extensive work with local/remote branches with git-svn and I never saw anybody actually branching / merging in SVN. I would never go back to SVN. And this is not a zealot-thing in which I'm stating an opinion to protect an investment -- Git is so much better that it isn't even funny.
  - sbarre 15y ago
    I agree I prefer git (and also agree that 99% of svn usage in our environment doesn't involve any merging), I think it's just that svn is filling our need for a remote backup/storage for the source code so we're sticking with that for now. That said we are a very small team and all in the same office so it hasn't been an issue. I suspect we will slowly start moving new projects over to git though.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    Git is so much better that it isn't even funny. To this day, I've yet to hear an argument for git's superiority that wasn't predicated on: - The assumption that hiding your work in a local branch is somehow a general feature instead of being detrimental to communication and optimized for Linux's development model, or - Based on a 2003-era understanding of SVN and its support for merge tracking, branch switching, etc. I keep hearing a lot of enthusiasm but not much to back it up. Do you have a different take than the above?
- div 15y ago
  We use svn at work too, but pretty much all developers have switched to git-svn. People used to working with tortoise or versions for mac still use vanilla svn, which is a big reason of why it's kept around.

jessedhillon 15y ago

Can someone offer an explanation as to the sudden explosion in git's popularity in early 2010?

Titanous 15y ago
GitHub?
- dbro 15y ago
  not likely. see http://siteanalytics.compete.com/github.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/github.com/ and http://www.google.com/trends?q=git%2C+mercurial%2C+svn%2C+github&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://www.google.com/trends?q=git%2C+mercurial%2C+svn%2C+gi...
aaronsw 15y ago
I think it's partly an artifact: due to a naming conflict, the git package in Debian used to be named "git-core" and was renamed "git" around then.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Groxx 15y ago
  Looks like that might be the case, if you combine the graphs of git-core and git, you get a roughly-exponential growth shape: http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git+git-core&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git+git-core&...
  - mlinksva 15y ago
    http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git++git-core+mercurial+bzr+darcs+cvs+subversion+monotone&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git++git-core... With CVS, darcs, monotone also interesting.

charlieflowers 15y ago

I wonder where TFS would be on this graph. Not that I think it competes well on merit with these others, but it still has some market forces pushing in its favor. It would be interesting to know how it compares.

dfc 15y ago
TFS?
- johkra 15y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server
dfc 15y ago
TFS would not even be a blip on this graph;) Assuming tfs is not toyota financing services it appears tfs is microsoft's souce code management system and therefore is most likely not going to show up on debian's popcon.
amcintyre 15y ago
I think you might need a semilog-y scale to be able to see it.
dbattaglia 15y ago
This is just a guess, but I get the feeling their market share is probably not too large. We use it at my current job, and I actually enjoy using it. The integration build system combined with work item tracking and testing is nice if you have the ability to tailor your companies workflow to the "TFS way" (we are only partially there, still tracking bugs in our legacy intranet site). That said, it truly is a beast to setup/configure/maintain, to the point where I can't imagine any small MS shop bothering (esp. ones w/o a partner license and decent inhouse servers and possibly a build/deployment guy). My last employer was still on sourcesafe (shudder!) when I left last year, and I'd bet they'll eventually go with something from SourceGear or Seapine before heading down the TFS path.

btn 15y ago

"bazaar" should be "bzr". It's important to note that this graph is generated with data collected from people who have the popularity-content Debian package installed [1]. The "vote" metric it provides is probably a more accurate method for comparing which of the packages are in active use (it records accesses of the package's binaries in the last 30 days). [1]: http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.debian.org/

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mahmud 15y ago

I actually heard this: "Linus Torvalds, the creator of Git". That's like saying "George Lucas, director of American Graffiti".

weaksauce 15y ago
To be fair it's more like George Lucas, director of Star Wars ep. 1 if we are going chronologically.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Let's be fair to Git. It's more like George Lucas, producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- knome 15y ago
  George Lucas, founder of Industrial Light and Magic.
- suivix 15y ago
  It was Sun who created Jar Jar.
dilap 15y ago
I dunno, git spawned a revolution in how we think of version control (even mercurial came out of the initial discussions of git); that's a pretty big deal.
- maaku 15y ago
  Distributed version control existed long before git, and any monotone enthusiast will tell you Torvalds got it wrong.
  - dilap 15y ago
    Fair point. How about, git spawned a revolution in how the masses think of version control? I've never used monotone, but my vague impression is it was indeed influential / ahead of its time, but didn't have enough of a focus on performance to really catch on. But that's totally uniformed speculation on my part :) (And certainly kernels existed long before Linux... ;)

teflonhook 15y ago

I don't think this is an accurate representation of what is going on because market share is not being taken from the others.

Palomides 15y ago
pretty sure any developer is likely to have several of these installed; I know I've needed to install them to pull stuff from various open source repositories, regardless of the fact I use git for personal projects
- derpapst 15y ago
  Indeed. E.g., I am using git for more projects than I use mercurial. To these projects, however, I just submitted a limited number of change sets. Most heavily I am using mercurial instead, which I also would choose for future projects. Maybe it would more accurate to measure the number of submissions per time interval.

dfc 15y ago

I am looking forward to seeing a graph of gnome3/kde/awesome/xmonad a couple of months after gnome3 hits testing.

lloeki 15y ago
Throw in XFCE in that list for those missing Gnome 2 and can't stand Gnome 3 nor Unity.
- windsurfer 15y ago
  I'm one of them ;)
- dfc 15y ago
  That was kind of the point...

rizumu 15y ago

Mercurial can be installed as a python package, but git is almost always installed as a OS package.

duodecim 15y ago

Another explanation could be that some packages started having Git as a requirement or dependency. I seem to remember there used to be a package related to the KDE desktop that required the SVN client. I'm not saying Git isn't becoming increasingly popular, but strange jumps might be explained by dependencies or renames, too.

sagarm 15y ago
The "vote" metric measures actual use, not just installs. See the bottom of this page: http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.debian.org/

jentulman 15y ago

I'd like to suggest that git growth, enhanced by the network effect of github, might also be down to the the ease of entry into using version control provided by the excellent freely available documentation and tutorials. I'm a one man team, by no means a guru but a competent coder, and git was the first version control system where I could make it past the documentation and get to actually using it day to day. I knew I should be using something, git was the something that made learning and implementing it very low cost.

edwingustafson 15y ago

indeed.com's Job Trends shows Subversion still king, Git growing, and Mercurial holding its own. Subversion, Git, Mercurial Job Trends http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Subversion%2C+Git%2C+Mercurial&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Subversion%2C+Git%2C+Mercu...

based2 15y ago

thanks lt, all and github

peteforde 15y ago

Where could I get ahold of the stats tables used to generate these graphs?

miztadux 15y ago
All the links are on Debian popularity contest front page: http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.debian.org/

civilian 15y ago

I took the suggestions and re-made the graph: bazaar -> bzr, git-core added, and only votes used. http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=subversion+git+git-core+mercurial+bzr+&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=subversion+gi...

sunils34 15y ago

i <3 gnuplot

nirai 15y ago

Git's growing popularity is not an artifact of some packaging decisions by Debian. See Google insights for search: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-5&q=git%2Csubversion%2Cmercurial%2Cbzr%2Cmonotone&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-5&q=git%2Cs...

joeycfan 15y ago

I saw this coming. Git is one of the greatest pieces of software ever. I can't imagine working without it ever again. All these git improvers like Mercurial are just gilding the lilly. Now we all owe Linus TWICE.