

Fine. Git is Awesome. - jmtulloss
http://justin.harmonize.fm/index.php/2009/01/fine-git-is-awesome/

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d0mine
Summary

Git is Awesome because it is a Mercurial with easily editable commit history,
"better" local branches and the killing feature -- git-svn.

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blasdel
It's also purely content addressed, doesn't attempt to make fake incremental
revision numbers, and doesn't enforce any workflow.

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moe
Incremental version numbers have proven very useful in many scenarios. I'd be
careful to list the lack of support as a feature for git.

I know that support can be hacky at best in a DVCS but often, especially in
the common "semi-centralized" workflow, that's good enough. Don't
underestimate the communication benefits of being able to talk about specific
revisions in chronological context, in plain english. "That was fixed in 982"
is much easier to parse and congest for a human than "That was fixed in
d934c8" or "That was fixed on last Tuesday".

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railsjedi
I agree. I actually wish git had something more like incremental revision #s

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jff
I think people need to worry less about their version control system and think
more about writing useful code. Seriously, when I look at the time people
waste making silly visualizations for commits done on some github project, or
doing "version control advocacy", it blows my mind.

Why not do something to improve yourself, like learn C or Lisp, or port some
sortware?

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jerf
"I think people need to worry less about their version control system and
think more about writing useful code."

If you seriously think those are in opposition, you either need more
experience with version control (preferably a modern one) or more experience
with coding in a real environment with many people. Possibly both.

There really isn't any two ways about that. The only two ways you can think
version control is worthless is if you've only used worthless version control
(Hi, Visual Source Safe!) or you're caught on the wrong end of a Blub paradox.

I have a guy at work who thinks version control is beneath him, too. I say him
and his twenty distinct-and-slightly-different versions of critical scripts
that require huge maintenance (often incompletely done) for every trivial
change are wrong, and I end up paying the price.

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jff
Sorry if that came across the wrong way. I intended to say that fanboyism over
a version control system seems foolish. I've used a couple version control
systems, although currently Plan 9 does all the version control I need with
its archival fileserver (works for my kernel modifications).

I would never suggest undertaking a major coding project without _some_ form
of version control. However, it's a _tool_ used to improve your work; going
nuts over git (which seems to be the fashionable thing these days) is like an
artist raving over how great his paintbrushes are and making special little
boxes for them, or a carpenter who won't stop talking about his hammer when
he's supposed to be roofing your house.

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jerf
Fair enough. I (obviously) misinterpreted your post as being against version
control itself. Fanboyism does suck.

However, DVCS systems _are_ better than the previous state-of-the-art, by
enough to be excited about. Not fanboyish about, but certainly excited about.

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jballanc
As a corollary to the argument presented here, I had to give up Git the first
two times I tried it because the Subversion integration wasn't all there yet.
Git, on it's own, was miraculous and beautiful, but it all fell down when I
couldn't push back to Subversion past a branch (this was in the 1.3 days of
Git).

Now, though, I couldn't agree with this article more!

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jacobscott
Anyone know if there is git-svn integration with Eclipse?

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jrockway
Did you just admit to using Eclipse on _this_ site?

Seriously, though, git-svn is very low on user interface, so you should be
able to take the standard git plugin:

<http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/EclipsePlugin>

and use that for most of your work. When you want to get changes from svn, or
commit changes to svn, just open up an xterm and type "git svn rebase" or "git
svn dcommit". You may even be able to get Eclipse to run an arbitrary shell
command for you, if so, you're set.

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dreish
Most of you who are punishing jrockway for his mild and inoffensive joke could
take lessons from him on how to behave here. He has been an active member of
the news.yc community for a couple of years now.

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sgk284
To add to this, it should be stated that downmodding a comment to less than 1
because you simply disagree with it is against the nature of the site.
Negative points are for comments that are entirely out of line.

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albertcardona
The compatibility with subversion is a major point, and reminds me of what
Eric Raymond said about Wine being essential for linux to succeed (as macosx
parallels is proving as well). See [http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-
domination/world-dominat...](http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-
domination/world-domination-201.html)

There is a pattern here: embrace the legacy without giving up any advantages
of the modern.

