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Mercurial is essentially git with a clean interface and drastically fewer workflows. If it weren't for github's existence I'd recommend hg to anyone. That sai

Mercurial is essentially git with a clean interface and drastically fewer workflows. If it weren't for github's existence I'd recommend hg to anyone. That said hg is the better choice for big software shops IMO, because of the lower training cost and because they probably won't use github anyway.

merijnv 14y ago
I'm using hg even with github. The hg-git extension from the github guys works surprisingly well for me. The only downsides I've found that push/pull of very large repos tends to be a bit slow and the conversion to/from git will clobber file move histories in hg, since git doesn't track file moves.
the_mitsuhiko 14y ago
> That said hg is the better choice for big software shops IMO, because of the lower training cost and because they probably won't use github anyway. Considering more people know git I would assume the training cost for hg is higher.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  More people use git; I'm becoming increasingly convinced that few of them actually know git.
  - the_mitsuhiko 14y ago
    > More people use git; I'm becoming increasingly convinced that few of them actually know git. And yet I have noticed that people find merging and branching much easier than in mercurial. Few people understand the implications of named branches in hg.
    - aidenn0 14y ago
      Yeah, named branches in hg are just weird.
      - reinhardt 14y ago
        Not as weird as hijacking the term "branch" to mean a symlink to a ref that is not part of the history. Then again why make it easier by naming it to something more intuitive, like say, "bookmark".
        qznc 14y ago
        Because a bookmark is usually immutable. If I bookmark "http://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com has "Hacker News" it will be same URL forever. In contrast, git branches symlink to a different ref, whenever you commit to it. A git tag could be called bookmark intuitively.
    - Anderkent 14y ago
      > And yet I have noticed that people find merging and branching much easier than in mercurial. That's the first time I've heard this opinion - do you know what kind of complaints people have? In my experience, it's much easier to say 'When you start work on an issue, start a branch called 'issue-XXX', then once you're done we will merge it into the default branch'. I've never seen much confusion in response to that.

merijnv 14y ago

I'm using hg even with github. The hg-git extension from the github guys works surprisingly well for me. The only downsides I've found that push/pull of very large repos tends to be a bit slow and the conversion to/from git will clobber file move histories in hg, since git doesn't track file moves.

the_mitsuhiko 14y ago

> That said hg is the better choice for big software shops IMO, because of the lower training cost and because they probably won't use github anyway. Considering more people know git I would assume the training cost for hg is higher.

aidenn0 14y ago
More people use git; I'm becoming increasingly convinced that few of them actually know git.
- the_mitsuhiko 14y ago
  > More people use git; I'm becoming increasingly convinced that few of them actually know git. And yet I have noticed that people find merging and branching much easier than in mercurial. Few people understand the implications of named branches in hg.
  - aidenn0 14y ago
    Yeah, named branches in hg are just weird.
    - reinhardt 14y ago
      Not as weird as hijacking the term "branch" to mean a symlink to a ref that is not part of the history. Then again why make it easier by naming it to something more intuitive, like say, "bookmark".
      - qznc 14y ago
        Because a bookmark is usually immutable. If I bookmark "http://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com has "Hacker News" it will be same URL forever. In contrast, git branches symlink to a different ref, whenever you commit to it. A git tag could be called bookmark intuitively.
  - Anderkent 14y ago
    > And yet I have noticed that people find merging and branching much easier than in mercurial. That's the first time I've heard this opinion - do you know what kind of complaints people have? In my experience, it's much easier to say 'When you start work on an issue, start a branch called 'issue-XXX', then once you're done we will merge it into the default branch'. I've never seen much confusion in response to that.