Subject: Re: Why is it important to learn git?

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:44:23 -0700 (PDT)

Dmitry Potapov <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:08:31PM -0600, Tim Harper wrote:
> > 
> > How has mastering the advanced features of git helped you to be a
> > better programmer?
> 
> I don't think that features itself make as big difference as the fact
> Git provides you much more flexibility in choosing a more appropriate
> workflow than you have with any centralized VCS. (Yes, you will still
> find many Git features handy even if you work with it as you did with
> CVS, but you will miss most benefits of Git).
> 
> To really understand what benefits Git offers, you have to realize first
> what is wrong CVS and CVS-like VCSes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to
> explain just in a few words. Some implementation deficiency of CVS is
> obvious (and it was addressed in some CVS clones like Subversion), but
> more fundamental problems are far less obvious even for people who used
> CVS for many years.

See also my answer for "Difference between GIT and CVS" question
at StackOverflow:

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/802573/difference-between-git-and-cvs/824241#824241
 
> To be fair to CVS, it is far from the worst VCS. There are some insane
> lock-based VCS, which were so painful to use (mostly due to these
> exclusive locks but often due to some other insanity too) that anyone
> who worked with may think about CVS as a really nice system...

By the way, even if CVS didn't implement support for file renames and
copying, at least it provides support for file deletion (as opposed to
*khem* SourceSafe).

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git