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This generally sums up why I prefer Mercurial. It provides all the benefits of a distributed VCS, but with less of the complexity, at the expense of some (usual

This generally sums up why I prefer Mercurial. It provides all the benefits of a distributed VCS, but with less of the complexity, at the expense of some (usually unneeded, at least for me) flexibility.

ajross 14y ago
Given that "everyone" knows git, and essentially no one uses hg, I think saying it involves "less complexity" is very much missing the forest for the trees.
- recursive 14y ago
  I see by your quotes that you are probably aware of this, but I think the set of developers that knows how to use git is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the one that doesn't.
  - ajross 14y ago
    Probably true. But at least in the open source community, it's pulled even with CVS and svn and is at least an order of magnitude higher than that of hg (or any of the other also-rans). Obviously "someone" important is going to use any product (see the irate comments for some great examples). And there are very high costs to heterogeneity in this world. Using a weird SCM means that every new contributor needs to learn a new tool and new workflow, and that hurts. Using the one that "everyone" knows is a big advantage to projects. And git is good. Not "the best" perhaps; and undeniably ugly in places. But it's more than good enough. And the existence of a community like github make it, frankly, better for new users than other options.
- teilo 14y ago
  No one except for the entire Python development team. And me.
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    And all of Mozilla. And Oracle's Java dev team. Windows support was a big deciding factor.
    - retrogradeorbit 14y ago
      And Adium and pypy and Sphinx and gevent and almost every project on bitbucket. But _apart_ from them, "essentially no one" uses mercurial! :P
  - davidp 14y ago
    And the vim team.
- statictype 14y ago
  essentially no one uses hgs Difficult to take what you say seriously when you make comments like this.
rwallace 14y ago
I find mercurial is a little easier but a mouse could starve on the difference. That having been said, while I wish git were easier, I can cope with it. I can't cope with both git and mercurial. I haven't got the brain capacity to remember how to use both of them without them blurring together. I want to standardize on one or the other. And once I ask which to standardize on, git wins by simple market share. That's why I ended up choosing it over mercurial.

ajross 14y ago

Given that "everyone" knows git, and essentially no one uses hg, I think saying it involves "less complexity" is very much missing the forest for the trees.

recursive 14y ago
I see by your quotes that you are probably aware of this, but I think the set of developers that knows how to use git is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the one that doesn't.
- ajross 14y ago
  Probably true. But at least in the open source community, it's pulled even with CVS and svn and is at least an order of magnitude higher than that of hg (or any of the other also-rans). Obviously "someone" important is going to use any product (see the irate comments for some great examples). And there are very high costs to heterogeneity in this world. Using a weird SCM means that every new contributor needs to learn a new tool and new workflow, and that hurts. Using the one that "everyone" knows is a big advantage to projects. And git is good. Not "the best" perhaps; and undeniably ugly in places. But it's more than good enough. And the existence of a community like github make it, frankly, better for new users than other options.
teilo 14y ago
No one except for the entire Python development team. And me.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  And all of Mozilla. And Oracle's Java dev team. Windows support was a big deciding factor.
  - retrogradeorbit 14y ago
    And Adium and pypy and Sphinx and gevent and almost every project on bitbucket. But _apart_ from them, "essentially no one" uses mercurial! :P
- davidp 14y ago
  And the vim team.
statictype 14y ago
essentially no one uses hgs Difficult to take what you say seriously when you make comments like this.

rwallace 14y ago

I find mercurial is a little easier but a mouse could starve on the difference. That having been said, while I wish git were easier, I can cope with it. I can't cope with both git and mercurial. I haven't got the brain capacity to remember how to use both of them without them blurring together. I want to standardize on one or the other. And once I ask which to standardize on, git wins by simple market share. That's why I ended up choosing it over mercurial.