SQLite Doesn't Use Git

What other VCS has the same tooling, free-as-in-free-beer online services, and broad base of surface knowledge as git? When I started studying my TAs brought out a cool new tool called Mercurial which was my introduction to version control. Guess how often I’ve used it since. Git is the software equivalent of the piano: easy enough to wield but difficult to master, mechanically simple but highly intricate, standardised in many different shapes and sizes with incredible variation, and truly ubiquitous.

Apart from its ubiquitousness, these are all neutral features: there are lots of crappy piano players out there who might be better off learning a different instrument, but if you don’t have any other preference it’s hard to go wrong with the default choice. Git is one of those tools where it’s really not worth the trouble looking elsewhere unless you know what you’re looking for, because there’s value sometimes in going with the flow. Whether it was for the best that git was the tool we all settled on, I think there’s some good in the fact that we settled on something.

Well, it takes like 10 seconds to learn Subversion to a usable level. So you could argue that it is a superior system … everywhere it’s viable.

What’s the GitHub of Subversion?

Well... it's actually Github: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/importing-your-projec...

I mean, GitHub supports svn clients but it’s git all the way down. Granted I haven’t used svn on GitHub but I doubt it’s treated as a first class citizen. This is really just a stepping stone to migrating your VCS to git.

This is the wrong question.

The right question is why did git need github in the first place (while svn didn't)

svn had forges (sourceforge, rubyforge, etc.) that fulfilled many of the same things that GitHub does.

Mercurial

Which has 90% the same features as git, with 10% of the tooling and knowhow around it.

It legit may be a few % better for a few workflows, but why die on that hill?

It’s a better tool. Never seen someone complain about how to use mercurial. Complaints about how to use git are ubiquitous.

I used both, and I would complain about HG.

Complain “about” it sure. Complain about how hard it is to use? I wouldn’t believe you.

Sigh

Are you still trying to use HG? How goes that fight :)

Gave up. But not a day goes by I don’t get annoyed with git.

Weird. I use it 20x a day for years, and haven't even been slightly annoyed in the last 5? years since I learned all the syntax.

> Mercurial

Is that the same Mercurial that didn't even supported stashing local changes?

Exactly what does anyone stand to gain by switching from Git ti Mercurial?

Shelve shipped with mercurial 2.8 in 2013. Prior to that there were several third party extensions that did similar.

But it’s a good example of why mercurial was better. It’s more ergonomic. All of the parameters on shelve match what you’d see on other hg commands and to shelve and unshelve you use those commands, not pop and push. You can also give short names to shelves for use in the ui, not just the message or sha.

> Shelve shipped with mercurial 2.8 in 2013.

Not really. Mercuria's shelve extension existed for a while but it only saw its way into Mercurial Core and made available by default with the release of Mercurial 5.1.

https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/ShelveExtension

I feel it's disingenuous to clam that a feature was provided by an application if it's only provided as an add-on that requires the user to explicitly enable.

Why? It was a widely anticipated and announced feature.

The standard way mercurial added new features was to gate them behind configs and only after they were widely tested turning them on by default. This is a good thing!

Prior to shelve being included with the mercurial distribution a third party extension was available going back to 1.x (or perhaps before I started using it around 1.8). And get this, it also prioritized ergonomics and was largely just adapted directly.

> I feel it's disingenuous to clam that a feature was provided by an application if it's only provided as an add-on that requires the user to explicitly enable.

Would you consider it disingenuous to claim that there's visual UIs for git? It seems weird to ignore extensions that are extremely well known within the community. Plenty of people recommend using Firefox because it supports better ad-blocking extensions, even though those are also "sold separately".

been a while since i used it but best i recall Mercurially was a very close competitor to git, but in many cases had arguably better commands for accomplishing the tasks. That is to say, less memorization of archaic patterns and more "oh that makes sense". Git has gotten a lot better in this area since then.

Git stash however, is one place where it's just crap. `git stash apply stash@{3}` ?!?!? No. omg no. Sure, for "hey it works" but not for "hey let's have this be the standard interface that we give to everyone and never improve" After all these years we still can't say `git stash apply 3` ??? really?

also git stash is wildly divergent in terms of conventions relative to all the other commands.