Re: Deciding between Git/Mercurial

[Daniele Segato <daniele.bilug@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Anteru
<newsgroups@catchall.shelter13.net> wrote:
> I'm currently evaluating DVCS for a project, and we're at a point where
> it comes down to either Mercurial or Git. Right now, I'm advocating for
> Git, while my co-workers like Mercurial, so I'd like to provide some
> good arguments in favor of git. Unfortunately, I'm not a git expert, so
> I hope I can get some help here ...
>
> First of all, what's the matter with git and Windows, is there some
> long-term commitment to make git work on Windows as well as on Linux?
> I'm using msysgit on Windows, and personally I'm happy with it, but my
> co-workers constantly nag that Mercurial has superior portability ...


Can I propose to make this discussion cross-mailing list adding the hg
mailing list to the CC?
I think it would be a good discussion if we don't end up flaming.
Let me know what you think about it


about the Windows+Git compatibility, you may consider TortoiseGit too
for the not-CLI-oriented guys; I've seen it a while ago and it seems
pettry well integrated with windows


> Mercurial's revision number system: With git, I get an SHA1 hash for
> every commit, but it's not possible to see whether Hash1 is newer than
> Hash2, while Mecurial also adds a running number to each commit. What's
> the rationale behind this decision for git, and is it possible to
> emulate Mercurial's behavior somehow?


If you tag a commit then you should be able to see how many commits
there are from that one issuing a git describe
(found on the internet)
git commit -m'Commit One.'
git tag -a -m'Tag One.' 1.2.3
git describe    # => 1.2.3
git commit -m'Commit Two.'
git describe    # => 1.2.3-1-gaac161d
git commit -m'Commit Three.'
git describe    # => 1.2.3-2-g462715d
git tag -a -m'Tag Two.' 2.0.0
git describe    # => 2.0.0


> So far, my key arguments are that git is more robust (more projects
> using it, larger developer base), of course git's excellent performance
> and the much better support for SVN, which is important for us as we can
> slowly migrate from SVN->Git, while hgmercurial is still in the making
> (and Python's SVN->Hg switch is for instance waiting for it).