Why Google uses Mercurial over Git

Excellent DVCS Analysis: http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis. In summary:

  • In terms of implementation effort, Mercurial has a clear advantage due to its efficient HTTP transport protocol.
  • In terms of features, Git is more powerful, but this tends to be offset by it being more complicated to use.

I’ve adopted Git for my own personal use, though have recently learned that there is a whole family of distributed version control systems. After reading this article, it made a lot of sense for Google to adopt Mercurial, but left me satisfied that Git is a better tool for my personal use. Still, it probably makes sense to spend a little time with Mercurial and a few of the other systems because you never know when a little bit of knowledge can help you out of a bind.

2 Replies to “Why Google uses Mercurial over Git”

  1. Actually Git recently acquired so called “smart” HTTP transport support, which should be as efficient as Mercurial HTTP transport.

  2. Jakub, that’s cool. I did some http transfers recently and it seemed pretty quick. I just figured that’s because my project was small. Good to know, thanks!

    Nick

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