hg, git, fossil, ... [was Re: What is acceptable as 'open-source'? [was Python vs C++]]

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 4:51 AM, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
> The "simple hg commands" are generally not all that different (in my limited
> experience) than the "simple git commands," for some definition of "simple."
> Stuff like clone, init, push, pull, commit, the small number of commands you
> use day in, day out. When you get beyond that simple core, both are
> confusing to me. I think it all boils down to what you use most often. At
> work they settled on git awhile ago, so I'm now comfortable with the basics
> there, though I recently had a rather unpleasant first experience with "git
> rebase." Both hg (almost all of it for me) and git (the stuff I don't
> regularly use) are like Perl: I need to consult the documentation every step
> of the way. Thank God for StackOverflow. :-)

+1. And most importantly: Use source control even though you don't
understand all the ins and outs of the one you're using, because you
can always get help when something goes wrong. I got my family (mostly
non-technical people, or technical people from decades ago - my dad's
been in computing since before I was born, but he doesn't know most of
the modern tools) to use a git repo instead of a shared directory,
basically by giving them very clear and simple instructions: "git pull
--rebase" to see other people's changes, "git add" when you create a
new file, "git commit -a" to record your changes, "git push" to send
the changes to the central server. (Yes, I know git doesn't need a
central server. It's still much simpler to describe it all that way.)
If anything goes wrong, they call me for help. They don't need to
understand about the myriad ways to call on "git log", they don't need
to worry about bisecting, they don't even need to branch/merge... and
git happily runs for them, every single day. The "simple hg/git
commands" will get you through a pretty huge amount of coding.

ChrisA