Hacker News Reader

Comment by MartinCron | Hacker News Reader

Which is why I use hg instead of git.

I totally see where you're coming from, and I personally think hg is great. I just don't want your comment to scare windows developers off. For the record: running git on windows is great.

View on HN

Disagree. It's gotten better, but the tooling is awkward, the commonly used UI (TortoiseGit) is wonky, and not being a "native citizen" on the OS isn't acceptable--MSYS is a mess to have around on a Windows machine and even the "minimal subset" that you can install with Git is more than I consider acceptable. (I realize that entirely too much of Git is UNIX-based plumbing, but that's their problem.)

I gave Git another shot when Bitbucket started to support it (I won't use GitHub, as it happens), but it didn't shake out for the above reasons. I like being able to open stuff up on any of my machines and the lack of care I perceive in Git on Windows drives me to stay with hg a lot more than it would otherwise.

git GUIs on windows are all pretty weak, but the git command line and git bash work perfectly well.

my experience with git GUIs in general (regardless of the OS) is that you should just give up and use the CLI.

cygwin's gitk works just fine. (or sh -c "git gui")

After using Tower on Mac you may change your mind. If there was a client like that on Windows it would win. Currently hg integrates cleanly and more of a svn replacement since it is more open. Note: I code mainly on osx but some .net only on windows.

I always thought it was cool that Mercurial is written in Python, part of that cross platform magic.

Cool, great. Except that the Windows command line sucks and bash is uncomfortable to the point of unusability on Windows. I will use a shell (not bash) on Unix platforms where it is properly integrated and meshes with the rest of my workflow; this is not Windows, and attempting to attach it to Windows with baling wire does not work for me.

My experience with source control systems--you know, including ones that aren't git--is that you can generally find a good UI for them. SourceTree on Mac is great for hg and git. Tower is great for git, too. Even TortoiseHg is a country mile past TortoiseGit in usefulness.

I use M-x eshell in Windows to get a somewhat comfy command line.

Tried it, despite not being an Emacs guy - it's better, but not great.

Honestly, when I wasted time (and it really was a waste) using Cygwin or similar stuff, I just ran sshd and SSH'd to myself from Penguinet.

Powershell + msysgit work just fine. It puzzles me why people still keep referring to ye olde command prompt as "the windows command line" when Powershell has actually been around for years now and (while significantly different to bash) is extremely capable. My only complaint really is the lack of dynamic resizing without first consulting the options box.

You might be able to use Console2 to get dynamic realizing. It works for me with got bash at least.

Use Powershell ISE for dynamic resizing and other niceties.

Have you tried GitExtensions at all? GUI client that integrates with Explorer and visual studio.

Not recently - it was very unstable when I tried before. These days I have no call for it because all my projects are in hg.

I think poor IDE support is pretty unilateral because git is supposed to used from a command line. It is great to work with a tool where the UI is an after thought because the UI will always be cumbersome with something as complex as source control.

msysgit works great, has for years. The install is simple enough a non-technical person can do it. I've used git on projects with non-technical people checking in from the command line. It is pretty surprising to see a PM have an easier time than a dev only because they don't have years of UI driven source control working against them. Using source control from the command line... well that is the trick. Though I haven't met many great developers who cannot.

Also, git extensions is pretty good (better than tortoise). I usually install it because viewing the history from the IDE is a nice way to keep your flow going. You can do some creative things searching through the logs as well.

I initially struggled with Git on Windows (TortoiseGit was buggy and I'm not a fan of command line) and passed it up for Hg. I took a look back in April (since I liked where GitHub & Bitbucket were going whereas the equivalents for Hg were not as impressive) and since then I've been using GitExtensions + the Git Source Control Provider for Visual Studio with zero issues and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Sounds like we had similar experiences. I went to HG but then gave Git another attempt because I didn't like feeling defeated. I've since been using TortoiseGit and it's OK. I've heard of that VS Git extension before. Maybe it's time I give it a go.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com