I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

I liked the thorough article, but my goodness did they beat around the bush w&#x2F;regard to <i>their</i> actual contribution to this process (per the title).<p>I think the short version is: they made `git-cinnabar`, which is a git-to-hg translator, to help git users interact with the Mozilla repos.<p>----<p>One contribution I can make:<p>&gt; For reasons I don&#x27;t know, Mozilla decided to use separate Mercurial repositories as &quot;branches&quot;.<p>Originally, separate clones was the recommended way to do &quot;topic branches&quot; in Mercurial (not to be confused with &quot;named branches&quot;). There was no direct equivalent to git&#x27;s branches. Eventually, Mercurial got &#x27;bookmarks&#x27; which basically closes that gap, but that only became a core feature in 2011, well after these Mozilla repos were established.<p>----<p>Aside: I prefer Mercurial myself, and I hope to keep using it for personal projects until I die (:

Interesting, given that Google and Facebook [2], at least, eventually moved to have their repositories offered via Mercurial interface, instead of git.<p>I also would expect that Github eventually will also offer mercurial repos.<p>p.s. And let&#x27;s not talk about abomination that is GitLFS (starting from the fact that it requires separate subcommand).<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;engineering.fb.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;07&#x2F;core-infra&#x2F;scaling-mercurial-at-facebook&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;engineering.fb.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;07&#x2F;core-infra&#x2F;scaling-mer...</a>

I don&#x27;t understand why so many people seem to dislike git. But maybe in actuality it is not many people, as usually people who are discontent are the loudest.<p>I used Mercurial in the past for a bit, and it was fine. But for me it doesn&#x27;t seem to have any huge advantages over git, if any. And after so many years of experience using git, I know what workflows work well, how to resolve merge conflicts, how to revert to an old commit if something really gets messed up, etcetera.<p>I don&#x27;t see any other DVCS really being able to replace git in the short run and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if git will stay number 1 for the following decennia, as in my opinion it&#x27;s really great software. A DVCS really has to provide substantial benefits over git in order to replace git as the number 1 DVCS.

I&#x27;ve heard this point of view many times, but cannot find an extensive explanation of it. Could anyone elaborate on the issue with the GitHub review UI&#x2F;UX?<p>&gt; I hate the GitHub review UI with a passion. At least, right now, GitHub PRs are not a viable option for Mozilla [...] the more general shortcomings in the review UI.

Mercurial has a quintessential &quot;Rewrite it in rust!&quot; page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.mercurial-scm.org&#x2F;OxidationPlan" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.mercurial-scm.org&#x2F;OxidationPlan</a>

As someone who was using darcs in that era: it wasn&#x27;t just slow in the sense of &quot;it takes 10 seconds rather than 1&quot;. It was possible to get into situations where it would take <i>hours</i> to merge changes.<p>Apart from that it was the best developer experience I&#x27;ve had with a VCS.

I hate to see more and more people switching from Mercurial to Git. The way to overcome the &quot;network effects&quot; is exactly for large projects like Mozilla to stand tall and say clearly that they are going to use Mercurial because it is <i>better</i> and git is <i>worse</i>.<p>Of course, I shouldn&#x27;t really expect such from Mozilla given all the other dubious actions they&#x27;ve taken over time.

Reading that article unlocked some traumatic memories of Bazaar&#x2F;&quot;bzr&quot;.

i kind of wonder why there has never been an &quot;hghub&quot;, given that i&#x27;ve always liked hg rather than git. but i guess it is the torvalds connection?

Solaris source control moved to Mercurial so if you want to know if it scales then the answer is yes. I miss SCCS.

A bit off-topic, but: I am somewhat confused by the claim “Subversion was created by Jim Blandy”. I was around back then, and the names I think of when it comes to “who created Subversion” are Ken Fogel, Ben Collins-Sussman, and Mike Pilato. And certainly many other people, including Jim Blandy. My recollection seems to be supported by e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.apache.org&#x2F;foundation&#x2F;entry&#x2F;the-apache-software-foundation-announces58" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.apache.org&#x2F;foundation&#x2F;entry&#x2F;the-apache-software...</a> and also by looking at the early subversion repository history and mailing list posts.<p>But I was only a bystander (and early adopter), so maybe something went on &quot;behind the scenes&quot; that warrants this attribution? Or maybe it is a just a bit careless and was meant to be more like &quot;... he was one of the creators&quot;, which one probably could justify.<p>Coincidentally, I just checked the Wikipedia page for Subversion and was surprised that there is basically nothing on the history of Subversion and who created it, which I find sad.

Switching to Git makes sense, but choosing GitHub is diametrically opposed to what Mozilla claim their principles are — specifically principle 6 of the Mozilla Manifesto: “The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralised participation worldwide.”<p>=&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-GB&#x2F;about&#x2F;manifesto&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-GB&#x2F;about&#x2F;manifesto&#x2F;</a><p>In future it won&#x27;t be possible to contribute to Firefox without a Microsoft account. If Microsoft decide to close your account (which they&#x27;re entitled to do — they own the website), you can&#x27;t participate.<p>Mozilla were one of the few hold-outs against this particular attempted monopoly. Again, Mozilla makes a short-termist decision that makes sense for a Silicon Valley lifestyle brand, but makes no sense for an independent mission-driven public-service community project.<p>They&#x27;re an untrustworthy upstream.

Linux kernel development never used cvs, I believe Linus thought it gives people brain damage and did just send around patches and tarballs

What a shame.<p>I came in contact with version control systems in the following order CVS (also a bit of a weird episode using RCS), Subversion, git, then mercurial<p>I have loved git and still do. But nowadays I use mercurial for my pet projects.<p>There is no denying that git &quot;won&quot;, mercurial would have been a worthy alternative.

My only experience with Mercurial was in game development. What’s used these days in arenas where large file versioning is needed?<p>I think the ultimate answer is maintaining an asset stack containing files that allow for inherit diff chunks or however that might be described.

I hope one day Pijul[1] will become more common, as the more advanced alternative to git.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pijul.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pijul.org&#x2F;</a>

I kind of like Fossil nowadays, although I&#x27;m not entirely on par with their philosophy of not squashing branches. But the &quot;all-in-one&quot; aspect, together with &quot;one binary&quot; is pretty nice.

Snitched upon by his colleague, too!<p>(hi glandium, sylvestre)

Thank you, mercurial was obstacle (for me) all the time. Thanks for killing it.

Thank you.

Software unmaintained kills itself. I wouldn&#x27;t feel all too bad if you found a different solution that fits your demand. To say one shoe fits all is silly.