[implementations-list] style; VCS

[John J. Foerch]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 09:10:46AM +0000, Vegard Øye wrote:
> 
> Still, I am curious as to why you think it would be "soooo much more
> convenient" to use something else than SVN. :) While a dozen arguments
> against SVN can be googled in a heartbeat, what are /your/ reasons for
> disliking it? I want to know.
> 
> Vegard


  For my 2 cents, I am also a big fan of distributed version control, and
git in particular.  I use git for a largish project, a web browser in
fact, and its flexibility is just delightful.  On workflow criteria alone,
it can do everything that hg and bzr can, plus, and probably faster.  It
doesn't get in the way by prescribing a particular workflow; instead it
provides all the tools to support whatever your style of development, and
opens possibilities for better workflows to fit each situation.

  One of the joys of distributed version control is that it frees you from
having to send patches back and forth via email when collaborating with
other people.  (You can still do that if you want to of course.)  A
contributer just makes a publicly available clone, and gives you the pull
url.  You can then follow their progress, and cherry-pick their history as
needed.

  Git has a staging area for commits.  This decouples your changes from
your commit, meaning that if you have several projects underway, you don't
need to split up your work into separate branches if you don't want to.
Because there is a staging area, you can still make small, single-feature
commits, even if your working tree has other changes that you aren't ready
to commit.

  The two areas where hg and bzr may be competitive are multiplatform
support and *maybe* learning curve.  But for my part, it would be a hard
sell to convince me to give up git's flexibility for such cosmetics.

  For more evangelism ;) see http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/

-- 
John Foerch