On 1/9/13 11:37 PM, Barry Smith wrote: > On Jan 9, 2013, at 10:35 PM, Richard Tran Mills <rtm at eecs.utk.edu> wrote: > >> Git does some very cool stuff, but I have to agree with Sean's assessment of >> the user interface, and that's the reason I prefer Mercurial. This is not >> so much an issue with PETSc developers, but I like that the interface to >> Mercurial is so clean and simple that I can get collaborators who are >> reticent version control system users to use it in a sensible way. I've >> gotten many colleagues who were using SVN to convert to Mercurial once I >> showed it to them and they realized that it is *easier* to use than SVN even >> though its capabilities are much more sophisticated. I find that Mercurial >> sits in a "sweet spot" for me between simplicity of use and sophistication >> of features. > Very good point! If many of our scientific collaborators will be > overwhelmed by git but are able to use mercurial that is reason enough to > stay with hg. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. There is just no way that I would, say, move the PFLOTRAN repository over to git. I think we've got several folks who are happily and very effectively using Mercurial who would just find Git too complicated.
--Richard > > Barry > >> --Richard >> >> On 1/9/13 11:03 PM, Sean Farley wrote: >>> [...] >>> >>> * user interface >>> - git has notoriously had a bad interface and even when I think some >>> command will do what I want, it somehow messes up >>> - mercurial has a pretty clean interface for the most part (and more >>> importantly) makes typing shorter commands possible >>> >>> * speed >>> - tough to really say now that Bryan O'Sullivan's patches are in >>> mercurial and he's actively working on that front (for Facebook ? who >>> still uses subversion) >>> >>> * mutable history >>> - git decides this based on whether there is anything "pointing" >>> - mercurial decides what is rewritable by the phase (public, draft, >>> secret) >>> >>> This last bit of mutable history is what I've found to be an >>> indispensable workflow. I haven't seen any comparison of this >>> mercurial feature with modern git (to be fair, it's with a develop >>> version of mercurial). >> >> -- >> Richard Tran Mills, Ph.D. >> Computational Earth Scientist | Joint Assistant Professor >> Hydrogeochemical Dynamics Team | EECS and Earth & Planetary Sciences >> Oak Ridge National Laboratory | University of Tennessee, Knoxville >> E-mail: rmills at ornl.gov V: 865-241-3198 http://climate.ornl.gov/~rmills >> -- Richard Tran Mills, Ph.D. Computational Earth Scientist | Joint Assistant Professor Hydrogeochemical Dynamics Team | EECS and Earth & Planetary Sciences Oak Ridge National Laboratory | University of Tennessee, Knoxville E-mail: rmills at ornl.gov V: 865-241-3198 http://climate.ornl.gov/~rmills
