Comments on: Subversion to Git

By: Werner

Werner — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:56:34 +0000

Git definitely got many things right, but most SCM systems and git is the rule not the exception miss the most important part. While it is vital for the linux devs to get the command line tools up and running, you will get only a huge acceptance if you get the tool integration right. That is one reason why people still use VSS despite being utter trash, that is the reason why so many people stuck to CVS while being flawed and TortoiseSVN and the early Eclipse integration are the reasons why this system has taken over CVS. It the tool integration had been there realitvely early SVN still would have its place of possible CVS successors instead of having taken over CVS.
Git is an impressive piece of technology, but having a few tcl tk clients which ease some work is not enough, you need VStudio.Net integration, Eclipse integration even is more vital and Netbeans integration to its string rails support is a must have.
The only IDE which has some integration currently is Intellij....

By: Henrik

Henrik — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:36:24 +0000

Yes, VSS is amazing! It even integrates with Visual Studio.

Ok ok, being serious. I use git as well. It has really given me a tool with a wide application range. Need more visual tool support though.

By: Joao Trindade

Joao Trindade — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:56:57 +0000

I also worked with cvs/svn and never knew they were broken until I heard Linus presentation at Google.

One think that I was not expecting was how easy it is to create and use a Git repository.

I think that every programmer that uses the centralized paradigm should really give it a try.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:54:53 +0000

Patrick: I'm a solo developer, so I don't really need Git's distributed features, but the reliability and efficiency of its storage model are very important to me. With a large repository (particularly one with many files) it makes a huge difference in speed. The space efficiency matters when I'm using a relatively small laptop drive.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:34:07 +0000

Hey Git-Guys :-),

I think it is not really important how much disk space a repository needs or how beautiful an implementation is compared to svn, because git works in a totally different way and it depends of you development model if it works for you. There are features in svn you'll never need in git (like access control) and there are features in git you'll never need in svn (e.g. lokal branching).

So if you want a single repository, you'll get a easy way to show the people what is the current development version of the software and you'll get a single point of failure.

If you want to be independent from other developers and maybe from a server git maybe you favourite, but it can be a bit more stressfull to insert patches from a lot of different people.

In my opinion centralized version control systems works fine in a usual small and mid-size development team.

if you have a hierachical organized and you have to give your patches to a middleman, distributed version control systems are a good way to do it.

Greetings from a stupid and ugly svn (and git) user :-)

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:42:42 +0000

Here’s a response from a Codeville user.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:21:19 +0000

More from Wincent: “Subversion is awesome, in its own way, but it ain’t going anywhere. Git, on the other hand, definitely is going somewhere, and in fact has already gotten so far ahead of Subversion that I can’t imagine Subversion ever catching up.” That’s pretty much why I switched sooner rather than later. And, of course, it was nice to free up some gigabytes on my notebook drive and reduce by a zillion the number of files that SuperDuper has to deal with.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:37:18 +0000

Bill Bumgarner on Git and Subversion: “Git will win because it is about 8 bazillion times easier to use because it doesn’t scatter administrivia crap throughout your work area. This is just so fundamentally the right way to do stuff.”

By: Mark Grimes

Mark Grimes — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:05:48 +0000

I think he missed mentioning all the best parts of Git (e.g. content tracking, cryptographic history, delta compression), yet he did bring up the one major thing that Git lacks currently (svn:externals). He also undervalued decentralization which is common... I'm certainly interested to see his uncertainty and indifference diminish with a more thorough investigation of the toolkit -- but the great part about us being decentralized especially in community projects is how well systems like Git work behind a Subversion server. I remember when I had to fight to the bitter end for Subversion instead of CVS... now you just feel sorry for the poor souls merging trees from the Subversion client, even with svnmerge.py as it's not without limitations either.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:35:56 +0000

Subversion user and FlickrExport developer Fraser Speirs looks at Git: “I use externals a fair bit in my SVN projects, and I’m not yet certain how one could replicate them in Git.”