Subject: Re: VCS comparison table

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 21:00:10 -0400

On Sun, Oct 22, 2006 at 02:22:28AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> If I understand correctly bzr came to life much earlier than Monotone,
> Mercurial and Git but it was in beta stages very long. Bazaar-NG
> "repositories" to group bunch of "branches" seems inspoted by hg or git.
> Git (and probably Mercurial) was inspired both by BitKeeper and Monotone.
> Monotone started to be reasonable fast around time when Git and Mercurial
> came to be.

Yes, bzr predates Mercurial and Git; I remember talking to Martin Pool
about Bazaar-BG at the the 2005 Linux.conf.au, which was before the BK
turnoff.  At the time, I had considered using bzr-ng (which has since
been renamed bzr), but it didn't have branch functionality at that
point if I remember correctly.  Both git and Mercurial started
development at almost the same time right after the Larry McVoy
announced the pending withdrawal of the BitKeeper no-cost license.   

About one month after the announced BK turnoff date, I looked at the
various options for transitioning e2fsprogs, and at that point
Mercurial was **substantially** faster than bzr, and I believe
slightly ahead in features.  I also looked at git, but at that point
Hg was easier to learn how to use, and I figured for a project the
size of e2fsprogs, I didn't need the power of git, so I decided in
favor of Mercurial because it looked like it would be easier for
people to learn how to use it.

I think it's fair to say that the exchange in ideas have profited all
three projects, and that the different projects have different
strengths,   

						- Ted