Echoing a post: bzr vs. git

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 15:28 +0900, David Cournapeau wrote:
> Martin Pool wrote:
> > It's an interesting and thoughtful post, if also a bit disappointing to read.
> >
> > Certainly a year or two ago these comparison threads would turn into
> > rancorous flamewars all over, and I'd ask that that does not happen
> > here.  The point of this list is to help people with bazaar, and help
> > develop bazaar.
> 
> Oh yes, please, no flame war, that's really not the point of the
> article. I would go as far as marking my article as private if it does.

I find non-flame comaprative discussion about Mercurial, Bazaar and Git
very helpful.  Long may it happen.

I was pushed to Bazaar from Subversion a number of years ago, and
continue to like it for projects where a DVCS is the master -- the
Bazaar model and command set just work for me.  I agree that Git is
getting better and that is good, but its model doesn't quite work as
well for me.  I need to use Mercurial more to get a feel for it.

I wanted to point out that that most of my work is currently on projects
where a Subversion repository is the master copy.  Jelmer has put in a
lot of work and made sterling progress in making Bazaar a viable tool
for working with Subversion repositories where Subversion is the master
and not just a place to hold a Bazaar branch (which to be honest is not
really a relevant use case for any of my projects).

However, I am increasingly finding Git an easier Subversion client than
Bazaar.  Speed is an issue here, but only in complex non-standard
situations -- which is what I have :-(  The Groovy Subversion repository
is a structural mess and contains a number of projects scattered around
the place.  Git (git-svn) handles this reasonable where it causes Bazaar
(bzr-svn) a lot of problems.

Fundamentally, all the extra stuff in bzr-svn to allow Bazaar branches
to be stored in Subversion repositories (which causes the need for much
extra work) is irrelevant to me since the Subversion repository is the
master.  Git-svn's more simplistic approach allows for algorithmic
simplicity and hence speed -- as well as Git being a little faster and
generally a little smaller in terms of repository size.

Also Git handles (more or less trivially) multiple push locations and
keeps track (albeit possibly erroneously) and displays all the remote
branch markers as well as the local ones.  This is far easier to work
with than bzr missing.

The Git GUIs are ugly which is a big downside but the branch marker
display in gitk is worth its weight in gold.  bzr qlog can do something
similar (but only for local branches) for shared repositories, but bzr
viz appears not to be able to.  On Gnome with my theme qlog looks
awfully ugly, but not as bad as gitk.

All this is, of course, Subversion repository related and not Bazaar
general.
-- 
Russel.
====================================================
Dr Russel Winder                 Partner

Concertant LLP                   t: +44 20 7585 2200, +44 20 7193 9203
41 Buckmaster Road,              f: +44 8700 516 084
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