5 ms·

What is kind of funny here is that you're right locally. At the same time, the larger tech companies (Meta and Google, specifically) ended up building off of hg

What is kind of funny here is that you're right locally. At the same time, the larger tech companies (Meta and Google, specifically) ended up building off of hg and not git because (at the time, especially) git cannot scale up to their use cases. So while the git CLI was super fast, and the hg CLI was slow, "performance" means more than just CLI speed. I was never a fan of hg either, but now I can use jj, and get some of those benefits without actually using it directly.

smallmancontrov 6mo ago
Right, and I'm glad there are projects serving The Cathedral, but I live in The Bazaar so I'm glad The Bazaar won. The efforts to sell priest robes to fruit vendors were a little silly, but I'm glad they didn't catch on because if they had caught on they no longer would have been silly.
- dwattttt 6mo ago
  GNU Bazaar thoroughly lost, last release was 2016, Canonical retired it last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bazaar
  - hypeatei 6mo ago
    GP is taking about this[0] but it's quite hilarious that a VCS exists with that name. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
    - bonzini 6mo ago
      It's not a coincidence, it was called like that as a reference to facilitating distributed development.
landr0id 6mo ago
>At the same time, the larger tech companies (Meta and Google, specifically) ended up building off of hg and not git because (at the time, especially) git cannot scale up to their use cases. Fun story: I don't really know what Microsoft's server-side infra looked like when they migrated the OS repo to git (which, contrary to the name, contains more than just stuff related to the Windows OS), but after a few years they started to hit some object scaling limitations where the easiest solution was to just freeze the "os" repo and roll everyone over to "os2".
- w0m 6mo ago
  didn't msft write an ~entire new file system specifically to scale git to the windows code base? I have fuzzy memories on reading about it.
  - landr0id 6mo ago
    They wrote something that allowed them to virtualize Git -- can't remember the name of that. But it basically hydrated files on-demand when accessed in the filesystem. The problem was I think something to do with like the number of git objects that it was scaling to causing crazy server load or something. I don't remember the technical details, but definitely something involving the scale of git objects.
    - kritr 6mo ago
      Unfortunately even with these improvements, working in the repo was quite slow. Changes branches took an eternity, and people resorted to a more workspaces style solution. If you’re planning on starting a big tech company, I wouldn’t recommend the approach.
  - jamesfinlayson 6mo ago
    I thought Microsoft made a number of improvements to git to allow it work with all of their internal repos.
- kqr 6mo ago
  I have heard that the Google monorepo is called google3 but I don't know why. Maybe those things are common...
dijit 6mo ago
Small nit: Googles monorepo is based on Perforce. I think what happened is Google bought a license for source code and customised it.
- steveklabnik 6mo ago
  Yes, the server is based on Perforce, called Piper, but the CLI is based on mercurial. So locally you're doing hg and then when you create a CL, it translates it into what p4 needs.
  - surajrmal 6mo ago
    Depends on what frontend tool you use. You can use either. These days you can also use jj. I'm not sure the backend resembles peforce any longer.
- unmole 6mo ago
  > Google bought a license for source code and customised it. That makes sense because vanilla Perforce is unbearably slow and impossible to scale. Last I checked, it was bought by Private Equity firms and actual product development had more or less stopped.

smallmancontrov 6mo ago

Right, and I'm glad there are projects serving The Cathedral, but I live in The Bazaar so I'm glad The Bazaar won. The efforts to sell priest robes to fruit vendors were a little silly, but I'm glad they didn't catch on because if they had caught on they no longer would have been silly.

dwattttt 6mo ago
GNU Bazaar thoroughly lost, last release was 2016, Canonical retired it last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bazaar
- hypeatei 6mo ago
  GP is taking about this[0] but it's quite hilarious that a VCS exists with that name. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
  - bonzini 6mo ago
    It's not a coincidence, it was called like that as a reference to facilitating distributed development.

landr0id 6mo ago

>At the same time, the larger tech companies (Meta and Google, specifically) ended up building off of hg and not git because (at the time, especially) git cannot scale up to their use cases. Fun story: I don't really know what Microsoft's server-side infra looked like when they migrated the OS repo to git (which, contrary to the name, contains more than just stuff related to the Windows OS), but after a few years they started to hit some object scaling limitations where the easiest solution was to just freeze the "os" repo and roll everyone over to "os2".

w0m 6mo ago
didn't msft write an ~entire new file system specifically to scale git to the windows code base? I have fuzzy memories on reading about it.
- landr0id 6mo ago
  They wrote something that allowed them to virtualize Git -- can't remember the name of that. But it basically hydrated files on-demand when accessed in the filesystem. The problem was I think something to do with like the number of git objects that it was scaling to causing crazy server load or something. I don't remember the technical details, but definitely something involving the scale of git objects.
  - kritr 6mo ago
    Unfortunately even with these improvements, working in the repo was quite slow. Changes branches took an eternity, and people resorted to a more workspaces style solution. If you’re planning on starting a big tech company, I wouldn’t recommend the approach.
- jamesfinlayson 6mo ago
  I thought Microsoft made a number of improvements to git to allow it work with all of their internal repos.
kqr 6mo ago
I have heard that the Google monorepo is called google3 but I don't know why. Maybe those things are common...

dijit 6mo ago

Small nit: Googles monorepo is based on Perforce. I think what happened is Google bought a license for source code and customised it.

steveklabnik 6mo ago
Yes, the server is based on Perforce, called Piper, but the CLI is based on mercurial. So locally you're doing hg and then when you create a CL, it translates it into what p4 needs.
- surajrmal 6mo ago
  Depends on what frontend tool you use. You can use either. These days you can also use jj. I'm not sure the backend resembles peforce any longer.
unmole 6mo ago
> Google bought a license for source code and customised it. That makes sense because vanilla Perforce is unbearably slow and impossible to scale. Last I checked, it was bought by Private Equity firms and actual product development had more or less stopped.