

Ask HN: Who's using bzr for version control? - jwwest

I see a lot of push behind git and to a lesser degree, hg. However, bzr remains the read-headed stepchild of the DVCS world. Why?
======
hasenj
I find bzr and hg weird for the same reason that I never understood svn: I
don't know what the hell they're doing.

Because git is simple in its basic structure I feel like I can understand
what's going on. With bzr/hg/svn, I just have no idea what's going on, I have
no idea what the tool means by words like "checkout" and "revert" and
"update"; they're just too vague.

------
rryan
I contribute to Mixxx (<http://mixxx.org>) and it's our VCS. When we made the
switch from SVN, we did it mainly for the very nice integration with
Launchpad. Without Launchpad it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Also, it's
really dog slow compared to git, especially on our very large codebase.

~~~
mitchty
How big of a codebase? And is it all code or a mix of binary data? Finally,
have you benchmarked the differences? I'm kinda curious how hg/git/bzr stack
up on a real world large codebase.

------
geophile
Beats me.

git has a too-steep learning curve and is just cryptic and hostile.

svn is too intolerant of slight mistakes, leading to difficult-to-fix
situations, and merges don't work very well.

We tried both at my day job, and are now very happy on bzr. I also found it
really nice for my single-developer spare-time project.

------
AlexLa
Because there is no GitHub for bzr. I think git gained it's popularity mainly
because of GitHub and Launchpad is just not good enough.

P.S. Let me know if somebody's going to build a "BzrHub".

------
veyron
git has a specific poster child: the linux kernel

for a while, google used hg.

what high profile project uses bzr and advertises it?

I know the response sounds like a chicken-egg problem, and it is. To gain
traction, a prolific company or project needs to use bzr.

~~~
hasenj
Canonical endorses bzr, and uses it for Ubuntu and it's the only supported
system on Launchpad afaik.

~~~
veyron
How many people develop for ubuntu?

------
squidsoup
I believe Canonical use bzr for all their internal projects like Launchpad.

