this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023

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Do people use git alternatives? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by druge@programming.dev to c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

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I know other version control software exists, but does anyone use it? Why? What are the differences? All I've ever actually seen people use is git.

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[–] oleid@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There is pijul.

Pijul's defining feature is its innovative algebra of patches model for version control, allowing changes to be applied in any order without creating conflicts, thus simplifying collaborative work.
It efficiently handles branches and merges, with its patch theory often enabling it to automatically resolve conflicts, eliminating much of the headache typically associated with merge conflicts.
Pijul is also free and open-source

Check this out: https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/05/23/for-those-who-just-dont-git-it-ep-573/

[–] isaiah@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am so incredibly intrigued by this! This might sound like a dumb question, but are there any examples of what this looks like hosted on GitHub? My employer mandates GitHub as a standardized location for enterprise code. So I'm curious if there's a way to live in both worlds at once and not go mad.

[–] oleid@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Afaik GitHub is for git only. While you can import existing git projects, pijul has its own web frontend called nest.

[–] canpolat@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Git is definitely dominating the landscape. The fact that it is free software plays a big role. There are alternatives, but they are unlikely to gain much adoption. They may provide slightly better UX or marginally more comfortable flows, but it's not enough to replace Git. Not to mention, most developers don't even really care about which SCM they use.

[–] nous@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not to mention, most developers don’t even really care about which SCM they use.

Get them to use CVS for a while. They will care then.

[–] canpolat@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are right about that! It was a pain to work with :)

[–] Rexelpitlum@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You clearly haven't used ClearCase. That would seriously reallign your definition of "pain"... :-)

[–] canpolat@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I used ClearCase too :) And it was painful. But I don't think CVS and/or ClearCase are considered to be meaningful alternatives to Git at this day and age. I was mostly thinking about Mercurial and Fossil. They are brought up as alternatives to Git more often. That's my observation at least.

[–] sorrus@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There’s perforce which is primarily used for game development. Often games have a lot of binary files that are hard/impossible to generate diffs of unlike text based files. Perforce requires you to check out individual files and prevents any merge conflicts on an individual file basis.

[–] Mikina@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

My experience with Perforce hasn't been really positive - especially compared to Plastic SCM, which is amazing. The merge tracking in history is such a cool feature, and it's generally really smooth to work with.

The only issue is the pricing model, which is also a reason why I sadly can't use it on many projects. Unity way too greedy and their strategy is to just acquire and paywall anything usable.

[–] eluvatar@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Checkout doesn't prevent merge conflicts (unless you configure exclusive checkout which is quite annoying). We used perforce and definitely had merge conflicts, though they weren't as crazy as a long git branch would be.

[–] BusterLove@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually kind of miss Subversion etc now. Git was perfectly designed for open source projects, but its easy branching model has significantly undermined the practice of Continuous Integration in enterprise environments. I get that maybe devs just prefer working in an isolated branch, but something has been lost.

[–] isaiah@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Couldn't agree more. We used Crucible as a code reviewing tool, which allowed us to develop directly on main while being able to pick-and-choose commits to add to a review. This closed that CI gap for us in a meaningful way.

However, Crucible seems to be reaching end of life (my company even denied renewal of licenses for it). So now we're forced back into Gitflow, and it's sooooo painful.

[–] erAck@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is only one alternative for distributed version control, Mercurial. Everything else is significantly inferior, except maybe for special cases. Mercurial may be fine for newcomers to step in, but probably at some point the flexibility of Git will be missed. And because of so many people using Git there are more solutions to specific problems.

[–] oleid@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Everything else is significantly inferior

Which ones did you try?

[–] TheCee@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people that require support for a lot of big binary assets probably use something else.

[–] canpolat@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

There is Git Large File Storage for that. But there may of course be alternatives that are better suited for that kind of tasks.

[–] brunofin@beehaw.org -1 points 1 year ago

I've heard of some corporate environments using different tools because of some weird use case, but honestly I think it doesn't justify, if you're taking it seriously you should be using git.

[–] Netrunner@programming.dev -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Git is freaking amazing. Any current alternative is going to be a joke next to it.

People using other ones are simply missing out. SVN/CVS just need to die.

[–] jim@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I've heard good things about hg though I haven't used it myself. Git has the biggest mindshare that I never bothered even checking. Might as well use it and move on.

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