Re: Mercurial vs. git (Re: hurd-web/hurd/translator/unionmount.mdwn)

[Sergiu Ivanov]

Hello,

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 08:46:06AM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 13. September 2009 18:26:42 schrieb Sergiu Ivanov:
>
> > I remember your long discussion about Mercurial vs. git, but I don't
> > remember all the details, because I didn't understand a lot at those
> > times.  However, it has just occurred to me that I should start
> > familiarizing with Mercurial by reading that discussion, because in
> > this way I could reference things with respect to git, which I already
> > know.  In this way I'll the explanation ``why git is great'', too :-)
> 
> I'd rather just read the last few posts, else you'll still be
> reading fulltime next week :) We wrapped up the discussion there.

Hm :-) Thank you for the advice :-)
  
> > Hm, immutable history frightens me -- my usual programming loop is
> > like ``think->try->think again'', and during the third phase I often
> > run into the necessity of changing what I have already done.  Thus
> > git-reset is one of my favourites :-)
> 
> I think "git reset" is the equivalent to "hg rollback" which reverts
> the last transaction.
> 
> It's the only history changing operation in the standard commands,
> and I guess that the reason is that it's used very often.
> 
> I for one tend to do 
> $ hg ci -m "did it"
> $ (think, find a typo, curse mentally)
> $ hg roll
> $ hg ci -m "did it" (OK, in fact that's hit the up arrow twice and follow up 
> with enter :) ). 
> $ (smile, think again... :) )
> 
> That whole loop shows up as one commit, too (since the last commit
> is the last transaction).

Aha, this means that hg does have an undo operation :-) This is what I
often lack in real life ;-)
 
> "hg rollback" can also be used to undo pulling from someone, since
> it just reverts the last change to the history.

Sounds great; I'm can't remember git-reset being able to do that, but
it might be my lack of knowledge.
  
> > BTW, I like the news idea a lot, since it keeps the Hurd web-site
> > regularly updated.  I, for instance, have the habit of looking at the
> > ``last updated'' date on any new site I arrive on to assess the level
> > of activity in the project.
> 
> I do the same - that's why I got the idea of posting the news :) 
> 
> Back in the "OS and networking" informatics course, our prof told us
> to gathe rinformation about the difference between the Hurd and
> Linux. I realized back then that I wasn't able to find out if the
> Hurd had recent activity in under an hour of searching.

Hm, that was really bad :-(
 
> Some time later I decided to amend that situation, first by working
> on the wiki (and nagging ;) - Thomas did the brunt work of switching
> to ikiwiki), and now by writing the news.

Oh, I used to think that the Hurd wiki has always been running on
ikiwiki...  Your mails are very informative for me :-)
 
> It can't be that the biggest vision for a really free kernel (I know of) is 
> deemed inactive, simply because the website isn't updated... especially when 
> writing is something I enjoy. 

Yeah, you are doing a very important contribution by writing the news,
and this is great :-)

Regards,
scolobb