Archive for April 25, 2008

Friday, April 25, 2008

SVN vs. Mercurial vs. Git For Managing Your Home Directory

Josh Carter:

For several years I’ve kept the bulk of my home directory in a revision control system. This allows me to synchronize my files across the two machines I use commonly, keep a backup on my home NAS box, and have complete revision history of files.

There’s a price, however: the SCM keeps metadata on my machines, and this can add up. Plus there’s the time needed to commit files. When it became clear I needed to switch away from Subversion because it doesn’t cooperate with iWork files, I decided to look into alternatives.

This type of setup is much easier when the VCS doesn’t litter the filesystem with invisible folders. git gc is usually overkill; I would have liked to see numbers for git repack; git prune.