Mercurial with the Evolve extension gives the same kinds of guarantees, but with much (much) nicer porcelain. Where Mercurial fell down IMO is being too dogmat

Mercurial with the Evolve extension gives the same kinds of guarantees, but with much (much) nicer porcelain. Where Mercurial fell down IMO is being too dogmatic about not allowing changes to the history/making it incredibly painful to make changes to the history for way too long. Git's decision to allow it all to be mutable was better for large-scale use. Git also was able to get a critical mindshare mass via Linux and Github. Staging is a feature I've never really understood the point of (why stage when I can commit by hunk instead?), but if it works for your workflow, great. Clearly it worked for the creators of Git. The magic of Git (and other DVCS) compared to CVS and its ilk is the DAG and reasonable conflict resolution on merge/rebase/cherry-pick. Everything else is window dressing.