This is actually a pretty good example of how NOT to write to persuade people. With the condescending and passive-aggressive tone, probably no git user will be affected by it in a positive way. But maybe the intended audience is the Mercurial community; lots of people, especially coders engaged in unix^H^H^H^Heditor^H^H^H^H^H^HDVCS wars, like their echo chambers.
Oh for heaven's sake, stop doing that. Yes, hg and git are somewhat different. They're both excellent tools. I'm a hg guys myself but I have no problems with using git when I have to. Get over it, seriously.
Completely and utterly agreed. I use Mercurial for my own personal projects. And I use git at work. They're both very good tools and completely eschewing one in favor of the other is a stupid absolute to have.
I am currently (and have been for some time, unsuccessfully thus far!) trying to find time to get some of my personal project ideas moving, and considering what to use for source/revision control (rather than relying on my daily snapshot backups which proved "good enough" last time I was coding in my personal time but are simply not optimal).
Overall I don't see a lot of difference between Git and Mercurial, at least no difference that is likely to be significant to my in the foreseeable future.
One thing pulling me towards Git is momentum: a number of projects that I might like to interact with live on GitHub so it might make sense to use that toolset.
One thing pushing me away from Mercurial is this sort of post. People are really getting het up about this one issue that it feels like they are protesting too much. OK, so there are no doubt some Git loving Mercurial haters out there presenting themselves in the same way though they've not got my attention yet, so either they are fewer, less vocal, or less well connected). Really. If this one issue is the only thing that your preferred choice does better than Git, then I'll happily join the flow and go with the momentum.
Mercurial and Git are both OSS projects. Both had their initial release around the same time (almost spookily similar - presumably one of those cases where the flow of discovery and itch scratching push to sets of people to the same conclusion at the same time) and are actively maintained. They both, from what I gather, do the job well - both are used by high profile projects (though Git seems to have the greater mindshare at the moment). By all means point out the differences between them including what advantages/disadvantages those differences impart, that sort if information is useful to those of us in a position of making a choice. But please calm down and cut the rhetoric, it looks like you are just railing against Git's greater mindshare, or just taking people's disagreement with your conclusions personally, rather than explaining the benefits of your preferred solution and it'll just make people like me ignore you even if you are passing on good information wrapped in said rhetoric.
The trouble with that (starting as I am with not experience in either product) is that I'd be needing to learn some of the ins and outs specific to both systems at once (so I could understand the interaction between them), which might not be the most efficient way to get started.
Or are they so similar at the beginner level that I wouldn't notice the differences or interface between them initially?
Git really should add this. As it stands it's pretty easy to figure out which branch a commit came from with git branch --contains <sha>, but it'd be nice to be able to see the name of the original branch in the commit itself so that you could figure out the context of an individual commit.
