Posts tagged with "dvcs"

I have used Mercurial for over a year, and started using Git on Agila Sverige. I really like Git and I have therefore kept a draft blog post trying to capture why I like better than Mercurial.

That draft was just deleted since I essentially share Dustin Sallings thoughts on the differences between Mercurial and Git. Apart from the Gnu Arch and Darcs parts - what he said.

I’ve been using distributed version control for over a year now, and if it is up to me, I will never use a centralized VCS again.

When I evaluated the alternatives last year, I choose Mercurial as the DVCS we are using at WeMind. The reasons were:

1. Usability - git was quite obscure back then
2. Speed - bazaar and monotone was quite slow
3. Large enough uptake - OpenSolaris and Mozilla started using Mercurial at the same time.
4. Runs on all platforms, if we ever employed someone who wants to use Windows
5. Built in Python which could be a good think if I ever wanted to extend it

A year later we are happy with Mercurial, but the landscape has changed. In particular I am seeing a huge growth of people using git, especially within the Ruby community. Which in itself is something I am happy about.

I just read this article on distributed version control by Ben Collins-Sussman who is a lead developer behind Subversion. If I understand his arguments, he basically says that DVCS is better than centralized VCS, but you probably should not use one since 80% of all developers are too dumbfounded too understand VCS at all.

I am one of the pretentious, self-righteous and obnoxious fanboys of DVCS. And let me tell you this: the difference between using DVCS and Subversion is on par with the difference in programming in Ruby compared to Java. If you have made the switch you just do not want to go back.

I am currently on my way home from northern Dalecarlia, and I am making full use of the 3G card. I had received a couple of update mails from our central Mercurial repo, so I tried to do an ‘hg pull’, and expected it to take a while. Lo and behold, I got all changesets within 15 seconds! This says a lot about Mercurials protocol, as the reception was so-so; no surprise as we are driving here:

I just got a mail confirming that I will not speak at RailsConf Europe this fall. I had submitted a proposal named “Version Control in Rails using Mercurial” which was going to show the benefits of using a distributed version control system when developing a Rails app. My opening line would have been “Hi, I am Marcus and I have been Subversion free for six months”.

For some weird reason, so many people in the Rails community - and the open source community as whole - still talk about Subversion as something great. It is not. Subversion is decent at best if you are comfortable knowing that you are using second or third best tools, but believe me, it is a crap choice knowing the alternatives in distributed version control.

I am starting a new development project where I will do a lot of coding myself, at least initially. There will most probably be times when I have to work offline - perhaps a litte evening coding while at vacation with my family, definitely the days when I am home because the kids cannot be at kindergarten.

So I had this initial thought - can I make a offline copy of the Subversion repository, make changes to it and merge it back when I come online again?