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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

git is as prone to bitrot as hg.

git doesn't run fsck on the entire repo for each operation, and unless you fsck or clone you won't detect corruption for quite a while.

it's exactly the same for hg, which is built on the same hashing concept as git (actually the other way round, as hg came first).

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Moreover, Mercurial's storage scheme is built on append-only files, whereas Git periodically repacks its objects, which means that Mercurial actually has fewer opportunities for cosmic rays to hit the bits while they are in motion, and so less chance of corruption.

Most bit rot isn't due to cosmic rays, but rather to decay on the disk itself.

Apparently, decay on the disk itself is sometimes caused by cosmic rays:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gbbym/index.htm...

Mercurial was announced on 2005-04-19 and git on 2005-04-07, so no Mercurial was not first.

Edit: Monotone is older than git though.

I think we can state they weren't copying each other.

Indeed, they both were developed separately as a reaction to the BitKeeper drama.

I think both started on the same day (due to both authors being part of the kernel "kabal" and already in the known about the upcoming bk debacle).

Mercurial was usable earlier though ;-)

(the first git versions were really really low level, and did not include features like packs, while hg had high kevel command line and its compressed storage format from the first release)

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