VCS comparison table

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 21 Oct 2006, Sean wrote:
> 
> Since the utility provided by revno's seems so minimal even in the
> case where they do work, Git simply doesn't bother with them.  And
> "our" experience is that Git really does work well without them.

Yes. This really is what it boils down to.

The _only_ time you actually use revision numbers (as opposed to 
branch-names or tag-names) is when you want a _stable_ number.

It's that simple. You never really need a revision number otherwise. In 
other situations, you do things like 

	git log --since=2.days.ago
	gitk v2.6.18..
	git diff --stat --summary ORIG_HEAD.. 

or whatever. It's clearly not "stable", but it's also clearly not a 
revision number from a UI perspective.

When you want a revision number is _exactly_ when you're moving things 
between branches, or reporting a bug to somebody else, or similar. And 
that's also _exactly_ when you want the number to be stable and meaningful 
(ie the other end should be able to rely on the number).

And if you need refer to a central repository to do that, it's clearly not 
distributed. Not needing such a central reference point is what the word 
"distributed" _means_ in computer science for chrissake!

			Linus