Re: GIT vs Other: Need argument

[Marcin Kasperski <Marcin.Kasperski@softax.pl>]

> but git is definitely no harder to learn 
> than anything else.  I browsed through the mecurial tutorial 
> yesterday - and as well as being significantly less powerful than git, 
> it's no easier.

Mercurial is easier to learn, because it has better docs and slightly
simpler command line (all those -a, -p, ... options which one always
forgets to add). I tried it.
In fact, I did the experiment about month ago. I wanted to give a try
to distributed vc tool. I started from GIT, played a bit with it, and
abandoned it because a) I did not know whether I am expected to use git,
or cg, b) While reading docs many times I had the feeling that something
strange and unclear is going behind the hood.

Then I took mercurial and in a few hours I felt I know all the important
things.

> (I can't believe this one - if you want to branch a mercurial repository 
> you have to have another complete checkout.  Erm... the checkout takes 
> up more space than the repository - why do I need another copy? Anyway, 
> git is no harder than Mercurial here)

AFAIK you are wrong, they are able to link some files while cloning, so
you loose space only if you switch machine or filesystem. Also, recent
mercurial has initial within-repo branches support. But I am not really
the best person to conduct git-vs-hg discussion.

> "(Note for Windows users: Mercurial is missing a merge program" - that 
> Windows support isn't looking quite so hot now.

Mercurial on windows works well with kdiff3 or tortoisemerge, you must
only install one of them. 

> > c) Lack of reasonable subproject support (plus detailed permission
> > model).
> 
> Mercurial has no native subproject support either - it requires a 
> plugin, git's is in development.

As I said, I am not conducting hg-vs-git discussion. I just happened 
to introduce and manage VC system in corporate environment, so I am able
to point that this is important feature.

> As for permissions, well Shawn has often spoken of his hook scripts that 
> implement very strong permissions (and he has done so again in this 
> thread).

I am not quite sure how can you forbid johny to see the code
in ./secret, while johny must checkout whole repo...

Permissions are not only about writing.

> Depends what you want - I installed cygwin 

This is really not an option for typical windows user. Believe me.
Maybe it could be, if cygwin managed to create normal setup program
one day...

Let me retype it: I am not complaining. GIT developers are not forced to
think about win users, or about corporate needs. But if they are, it is
reasonable to know the problems.