Re: [boost] [git] Mercurial?

Subject: Re: [boost] [git] Mercurial?
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-19 22:04:46

on Mon Mar 19 2012, Anthony Williams <anthony.ajw-AT-gmail.com> wrote:

> I've had numerous problems with git, including getting my local git
> repo into a state where it would neither push to nor pull from the
> remote repo. On the other hand, I've had no problems with Mercurial,
> even though I've used it on more projects, with more branching and
> merging.
>
> In one case, I was having such difficulty with git that I used hg-git
> to import my git repo into mercurial, so I could deal with the
> branches and merges in a sane fashion, then exported back to git.
>
> All my problems basically boil down to one thing though: the user
> interface (command line) to git doesn't map cleanly to the way I think
> about stuff, or the operations I wish to do, whereas the user
> interface for mercurial does. For me, mercurial is intuitive, whereas
> git is not, in a big way.

But for every story like that, there's an opposite one from the other
community.  For example, I find Mercurial's branch model completely
insane.  Multiple heads on a branch?  What on earth were they thinking?!
So on one project I used git-Hg to make the transition in the other
direction.

But seriously, if I thought Hg was winning in the DVCS marketplace I
would choose it over Git, even though I find it difficult to use and
ugly to think about.  That's easy for me to say, I know.  I'm just lucky
that I perceive the marketplace winner to be the tool I like better.

Oh, and please don't think me a Git zealot.  There are some things about
the design I quite disagree with, and the UI certainly can be harder to
grasp than necessary.  More than a little, that's the community's fault
for not explaining Git well.  But that situation is improving...

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com