Slashdot Mirror

Yet another DVCS article that doesn't mention Bazaar at all. And cursorily swats away Mercurial as "not as large a community."

It seems like just about every argument in favour of Git could be equally applied to any other DVCS. On top of that, the only thing it has going for it is a larger community (and being the creation of Torvalds).

I've argued to wit's end that Bazaar is superior to Git in a multitude of ways (branches as separate file-system directories, optional ability to work in bound mode as with Subversion, revision numbers, explicit notion of a 'trunk' versus merged branches, explicit moves/renames rather than heuristics, commit metadata). Basically Bazaar has a much richer data structure than Git. The last point (commit metadata) is crucial: because Git lacks commit metadata, it is impossible to meaningfully use any other revision control system in conjunction with Git -- what a selfish decision.

Yet all I ever hear is "Git is better than all the other revision control systems because [generic reasons why DVCSes are better than centralised ones]." Such is the case with Scott Chacon's site Why Git is Better Than X, which I wrote a rebuttal of at Why Git Ain't Better Than X.

There are plenty of reasons.

Why GIT is Better Than X

Why Mercurial is Better Than X

Why Bazaar is Better Than X

I started using emacs about 7 years ago, at which point the jokes about its feature creep ("nice OS, just needs a good editor," etc.) were already probably 20 years old. A few years ago I switched to mg, which is an emacs clone that is much more lightweight. The advantage of mg is that it loads immediately, and it has all the features I actually need. So maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but -- what is currently happening in emacs development? New features? Better performance? Bug fixes? Polishing the brasswork? I'm honestly curious why it can't just go into the same kind of masterpiece-maintenance mode as some of Knuth's projects like Tex.

As far as bazaar, my impression is that it has had a much lower profile than git, and that its main selling point seems to be that it's supposed to be easier to use than git. Here is bazaar's explanation of why they think bazaar is good. Here is a similar sales job for git. Bazaar is used by ubuntu, sponsored by Canonical, and written in Python. You can get free bazaar-based hosting on Launchpad. Personally I've been happy with git.

Why Git Is Better Than X.com/ YouTube - Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git (yeah, I'm a convert)

One thing that Linus left uncovered is whether git does cover-sheets for TPS reports.

Oooo.. dangerous thinking. The complete lack of administrative overhead seems like a great panacea.. until you realise that you are essentially side-stepping any corporate data retention policy, side-stepping the benefits of corporate IT support and data protection policies, and increasing risk of partial data loss.

Load of bullocks. I'm working in corporations for past 5 years and yet to see any "benefits of corporate IT support." Corporate IT is generally some bunch of management-ass-lickers. They do not care about mere mortals developers.

As to retention policy and data protection, for past 4(?) years, my $HOME is always and completely backed up - and that's includes all my repos. In fact it is volume over NFS mounted from huge NAS RAID.

Or are you suggesting that, via forced git pulls from every single developer to every single developer you are thus creating a redundancy strategy better than the typical corporate IT backup/disaster plans? ..

You are severely behind times. See above.

so how is it that you are going to force all developers to do a git pull, or at least a push to some central machine on a regular basis without actually implementing *some* sort of IT-supported machinery?

When developer gets assignment (e.g. implement feature), he is also responsible for delivering on the assignment.
In CVS/etc it is check-in to global repository.
In Git this is push into global repository.

Difference? None.

Well, in fact there is one. In CVS/etc developer is responsible for integration of feature with rest of the system. If he wasn't bright enough and f***ed up rest of the system in the process - whole R&D is f***ed up. In Git, "push" remains local to the "global repository" and if somebody broke something, one can always review and reject the pushed changeset - even before anybody can pull it. Or even if you cloned the global repository, you still can remove the changeset locally. In Git there is very little overhead of maintaining repos which work only as staging area: where to others can push and where you (as e.g. release master or tester) can compile/test the changes. After changeset was cleared by release/test teams it can be pushed further into real global repository, where it would be visible by others.

Check that out - "Integration Manager Workflow". This is pretty much ideal workflow, which in past I have seen people numerous times tried to implement using centralized systems. And before DVCS I have seen only one solution which can be called "working."

Why Git Is Better Than X.com/ YouTube - Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git (yeah, I'm a convert)