Git, Mercurial, or Bazaar?

Warner Onstine — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:20:00 -0700

The other big change I’m considering is actually moving away from Subversion. I’ve really enjoyed using it, but a recent discussion on the Groovy Dev list about Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) has got me looking at alternatives and why it would be good. I asked my friend Kate if she had any blog posts on why switching to a dvcs is a good idea and she whipped one up for me.

After reading through it I think I’m sold, but now I’m trying to figure out which one to try out first. Git honestly looks like the clear winner here in a number of respects:

Serious mindshare amongst the OSS projects
Has a great community committed to pushing the project forward (as Kate suggests )
Has some really good functionality (even if it is a bit obtuse to get to understand)
Looks like the beginnings of some plugins
- Eclipse

But it also has some (current) drawbacks:

Tools are really only available on Linux - Mac looks like its coming but could be a pain in the ass to build, forget Windows right now
- No IDEA plugin yet (bummer) - but it does look like IDEA 8 will support it
- No NetBeans plugin
It’s a bit obtuse to learn - the commands are not necessarily the easiest to understand but they do have a Subversion -> Git guide online

So, I think I will try Git first, maybe. What about the other two - Bazaar and Mercurial? Bazaar honestly looks like 3rd place contender right now, but it does have some interesting tools available to it. Let’s look at Mercurial next.

There are some pre-built packages for OS X and Windows - nice
Again, looks like the beginnings of some plugins
- Eclipse
- IDEA
- NetBeans

Some current drawbacks

Doesn’t seem to have the same mindshare as Git does (this is my perception not necessarily true)

Now onto Bazaar.

Binaries available for multiple platforms - OS X, Windows, and Linux
Patch Queue Manager - very interesting tool
Bundle Buggy - another interesting tool
There are again plugins available
- Eclipse
- IDEA

Of course after I started this I found this much more in-depth review of the different systems over at InfoQ.

I think after reading a ton more on this (and the InfoQ article) that I’m going to give Mercurial a short first and see how it goes. Kate makes two more points at the end of this blog post on Mercurial vs. Git (which itself was a response to another blog post) - If you need Windows support or documentation are important items then Mercurial may be a better choice. For me, while I don’t need Windows support, it will be nice to understand what I’m trying to do first.

BlackBox : Tag subversion

Git, Mercurial, or Bazaar?