SVN vs GIT, opinions?

[Pat Farrell]

SVN is driving me nuts. I've been using it for years, probably half a decade. But they changed the merge logic with 1.5, and again with 1.6, and it is flakey. I usually have no problems, but many of the other folks on my team report tons of problems, including one who claimed "50% of my merge fail"

I see that git is getting a lot of use, and I know that Linus was quoted saying that svn's claim to be a better CVS was that there is no way to do CVS right, so SVN is doomed.

Its clear to me from an hour or two of reading tutorials and the "git for svn users" pages that git has a very different style and it is used differently.

I can't get my head around how it is better, right now, its just different.

I don't want a theological discussion, but I would love to hear from professional developers who have made the change one direction or the other.

Thanks
Pat

[David Newton]

Well, first, if people are having "tons of problems" and 50% of their merges aren't working, then *someone* is doing something wrong. I'd first address that via some training, because SVN merging is about as straight-forward as it gets if it's done correctly.

A DVCS is really, really handy, especially if you do a lot of disconnected work. How Git manages the granularity of changes is really, really handy, especially if you like to branch a lot (I do--it's a great way to keep yourself from screwing up the entire world)--I love that part.

That said, if SVN is giving your guys that much trouble, IMO a jump to git is just going to make things worse.

If you really want a religious war, start talking about the different DVCSs... otherwise it's too much apples to oranges. The Git for SVN users won't really give you a true flavor of what Git can do, since it's mostly trying to make a migration painless. And Git *can* (mostly) work like SVN, but I'm not sure how much you're gaining.

[Pat Farrell]

David Newton wrote:Well, first, if people are having "tons of problems" and 50% of their merges aren't working, then *someone* is doing something wrong. I'd first address that via some training, because SVN merging is about as straight-forward as it gets if it's done correctly.

Sorry, I think you are getting into theology here. If you read the svn-users mailing list, you will see that a huge portion, perhaps more than half, of all questions and problems are about merging. The fact that the svn folks have reworked it seriously in both 1.5 and 1.6 is a fact. I think that indicates that its not straight-forward.

version control is not rocket science or baseball, I don't think its supposed to be hard

David Newton wrote:A DVCS is really, really handy

I've used at least a half dozen, and probably closer to a dozen different "VCS" systems over the past decades. I claim that there isn't much difference in philosophy between pvcs, vss, cvs, svn, etc. although there are technical differences.

I don't grok git at all. I can't make any intelligent decisions about it with my limited understanding.

Linux's talk at Google about it is great fun to watch, but it really doesn't explain how to use it.

[Gregg Bolinger]

I started a thread a while back about Git. It didn't get very far. I've seen a lot of articles trying to compare Git to SVN and I think therein lies the problem. The way you use SVN (or typical VCS) and the way you use Git (DVCS) are just plain different. It's kind of like trying to compare XP to Scrum. They both want to accomplish the same goals and they overlap in places but they are different.

I personally don't think one can ever claim greatness over the other. So one is not better. I tried using Git on a project with my biz partner and we ran into some horribly complicated issues that took days to resolve. Partly because we were both new to Git and partly because it can get complicated, just in general. I'm really interested in what more folks more familiar with Git have to say here.

[Pat Farrell]

Gregg Bolinger wrote:I started a thread a while back about Git. It didn't get very far. I've seen a lot of articles trying to compare Git to SVN and I think therein lies the problem.

Yes, I believe its very much an applies to oranges comparison.

Even Linux's talk comments that the UI was terrible and is only getting better.

Long ago, I was using assorted project management/pert/gantt programs (i.e. Microsoft Project) and I found that I hated them. After I used a bunch of them, I decided that I hated them because the basic concept of staffing complex software projects is a hard problem. Perhaps NP-Hard. So all the software that tried to make it "easy to use" was pushing on a rope. I was trying to do it "right" as in inventing a schedule that had engineers working only 40 hours weeks, allowing for vacations and holidays. I figured that since software is always late, and folks have to work nights and weekends, if you start with a schedule that assumes overtime, you have nowhere to go when the inevitable happens.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Pat, I don't have anything to tell you, but I'm sure interested in hearing what you find out here. My experience has not been that Subversion merges fail, per se, but that the whole inherited model of "branches" and "merging" is just not sustainable (which sounds a lot like Linus' comment, doesn't it?) I've looked at Git a few times, and like you, I haven't been able to form a clear opinion. I suppose the thing to do is to start a greenfield project using it, as Gregg did, and see what I can learn.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I found a use for Git. It's useful when you don't have reliable internet . This makes merges and out of synch versions an extremely common event.

[David Newton]

Agreed. I also like the idea of being able to work without disturbing the "main" repository, particularly since I branch *copiously* when the SCCS allows. For me the granularity is still huge, though.

[Pat Farrell]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:It's useful when you don't have reliable internet

Not having a fast, reliable Internet connection is when I go looking for a single Malt.

[David Newton]

I have two bottles of Macallan 18-year with... my name written all over them.

[David Newton]

http://www.pragprog.com/screencasts/v-jwsceasy/source-control-made-easy

It costs money, but it might be worth it to you.