4 ms·

"git won the mindshare war" Sad, but true...

officemonkey 13y ago
They had two things going for it: * Linus was using it for the kernel, so it became mature slightly faster (because it had more people's attention.) * Github happened at the same time Sourceforge stopped being cool (this is the same time that Digg and Reddit started beating Slashdot.)
- levosmetalo 13y ago
  Github became popular because people wanted free Git hosting, not the other way around. Most other Github features just get in the way. Also, instant branching are really convenient feature. I remember the time when I was using Darcs that I got lost pretty quickly with 10 copies in 10 directories.
  - ghc 13y ago
    I disagree wrt Github. A lot of projects I was involved in wound up switching from git to mercurial because it was too difficult to manage git master repos on a server compared to Mercurial. Github solved this neatly, and the issue system has allowed my last two companies to switch from Mercurial+FogBugz|Trac to Github. That's useful consolidation and lower admin overhead.
  - sophacles 13y ago
    I think there was a co-evolution of the two. A lot of people started using git because Github was where the cool projects were being hosted. At the time, I recall hoping for bzr to "win". I like git these days but coming from an svn is king world - bzr was a bit gentler for transition.
mateuszf 13y ago
What's so sad about it? IMHO git is awesome.
- mickeyp 13y ago
  An unpalatable command line that has no linear mapping between commands and its arguments and what you want to do. It's a great tool, no doubt; but the user interface is terrible. I use Magit for Emacs which has eliminated my need for the git command line.
- midas007 13y ago
  I only use git: - it has a lot of non-orthogonalities and non-closure operations (ie options on one command are different or not present on other commands) - if the network drops, fetches and pushes have to start from scratch. For fetches, it would be nice to save partial packs and resume them. For pushes over crappy links, doing similar could be a potential DDoS, so setting up some sort of rsync box is probably better.
tachion 13y ago
The article is also mentioning bad state of Mercurial, any idea what he could have had on mind? What's wrong with Mercurial these days, beside its less widely used than Git?
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure Atlassian is the only major supporter of it, and even they co-host Git on BitBucket (I suspect to stay competitive with GitHub). And in my very biased opinion, Atlassian markets themselves with an aggressively old-school mentality (closed source everything, monolithic software, questionable terms of use, strong force in the enterprise market, etc.), which makes Mercurial look bad by association.
  - tonfa 13y ago
    facebook hired most mercurial hackers, to me they are the biggest current supporter. (and I would have cited quite a few other companies/org besides atlassian, who probably contributed as much as atlassian to the development of mercurial)

They had two things going for it: * Linus was using it for the kernel, so it became mature slightly faster (because it had more people's attention.) * Github happened at the same time Sourceforge stopped being cool (this is the same time that Digg and Reddit started beating Slashdot.)

levosmetalo 13y ago
Github became popular because people wanted free Git hosting, not the other way around. Most other Github features just get in the way. Also, instant branching are really convenient feature. I remember the time when I was using Darcs that I got lost pretty quickly with 10 copies in 10 directories.
- ghc 13y ago
  I disagree wrt Github. A lot of projects I was involved in wound up switching from git to mercurial because it was too difficult to manage git master repos on a server compared to Mercurial. Github solved this neatly, and the issue system has allowed my last two companies to switch from Mercurial+FogBugz|Trac to Github. That's useful consolidation and lower admin overhead.
- sophacles 13y ago
  I think there was a co-evolution of the two. A lot of people started using git because Github was where the cool projects were being hosted. At the time, I recall hoping for bzr to "win". I like git these days but coming from an svn is king world - bzr was a bit gentler for transition.

mateuszf 13y ago

What's so sad about it? IMHO git is awesome.

mickeyp 13y ago
An unpalatable command line that has no linear mapping between commands and its arguments and what you want to do. It's a great tool, no doubt; but the user interface is terrible. I use Magit for Emacs which has eliminated my need for the git command line.
midas007 13y ago
I only use git: - it has a lot of non-orthogonalities and non-closure operations (ie options on one command are different or not present on other commands) - if the network drops, fetches and pushes have to start from scratch. For fetches, it would be nice to save partial packs and resume them. For pushes over crappy links, doing similar could be a potential DDoS, so setting up some sort of rsync box is probably better.

tachion 13y ago

The article is also mentioning bad state of Mercurial, any idea what he could have had on mind? What's wrong with Mercurial these days, beside its less widely used than Git?

rmrfrmrf 13y ago
I'm pretty sure Atlassian is the only major supporter of it, and even they co-host Git on BitBucket (I suspect to stay competitive with GitHub). And in my very biased opinion, Atlassian markets themselves with an aggressively old-school mentality (closed source everything, monolithic software, questionable terms of use, strong force in the enterprise market, etc.), which makes Mercurial look bad by association.
- tonfa 13y ago
  facebook hired most mercurial hackers, to me they are the biggest current supporter. (and I would have cited quite a few other companies/org besides atlassian, who probably contributed as much as atlassian to the development of mercurial)