Subject: Re: Google Code: Support for Mercurial and Analysis of Git and Mercurial

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:16:16 -0700 (PDT)

Christian Couder <[email-masked]> writes:

> For information, now Google Code supports Mercurial for project hosting:
> 
> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/04/mercurial-support-for-project-hosting.html
> 
> Mercurial was choosen over Git because of this (one year old) analysis:
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis
> 
> There is this article on LWN about the analysis:
> 
> http://lwn.net/Articles/330138/

It is a pity that the choice was based on year old analysis.  One year
for actively developed and fast moving targets such like Git and
Mercurial is ages in terms of development history.  But I guess this
is unavoidable.

For example periodic "maintenance" (garbage collecting) is nowadays
quite automatic in git, with fetching into pack, periodic repacking if
number of loose objects is above tthreshold, and "git gc --auto".

Whether Mercurial or Git has better UI and better documentation is
IMHO a matter of debate.  Git documentation is much better that it
was, with "Git User's Manual" and "Git Community Book"; UI also is
being improved.

I can't comment on MS Windows support, but AFAIK Mercurial has better
support here than Git.

The deciding feature (well, one of deciding features) was the fact
that Mercurial has better HTTP support... I guess (it was not obvious
from the analysis, but it was hinted at) that Mercurial uses its
custom protocol over HTTP, as opposed to "dumb" HTTP protocol support
in Git.

Perhaps it is time to restart work on _"smart" HTTP protocol_?

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git