Git or Mercurial for Embedded Development

[miguelvp]

About a year ago Perforce offered free 20 seats so that's what I'm using.

Seems they have extended that to their new Perforce Helix, but I have not tried it.

https://www.perforce.com/downloads/helix

Don't know what extra features Helix has, I know their older Perforce integrates well with Visual Studio, even with the Free Community edition.

[ivaylo]

For a single developer who isn't sharing code this discussion is pointless. Git vs. svn vs. hg vs. cvs for a single guy, really?

[miguelvp]

For a single developer who isn't sharing code this discussion is pointless. Git vs. svn vs. hg vs. cvs for a single guy, really?

Not pointless. Even for one user being able to revert a changelist is a good thing. Or even branch from an old version to try new things.
Also, and of course this doesn't happen to me, code review some revision when I had too much wine. I do swear, I never commit in that state 

Why distributed? one machine can bite the bucket so you are not out of the full repository. Especially since we tend to plug projects into the USB port (haven't fried one... yet).

[con-f-use]

The most annoying cons of Git listed in a humorous way.

[nctnico]

For a single developer who isn't sharing code this discussion is pointless. Git vs. svn vs. hg vs. cvs for a single guy, really?

I'm usually in such a situation. It is very benificial because a version control system allows to keep old versions. When writing software nothing is more important than being able to support older (mature) versions of software. It is also handy to distribute code over more than one machine. For example: sometimes I use my laptop and change some code on-site. Back in the office I commit these changes into SVN and check them out on my primary PC.

I once worked at a company where a programmer for a large software product didn't keep the source of software which was installed in the field. So everytime a customer complained about a bug he couldn't provide a quick fix. In his view the customers had to wait for the new stable release with new (and buggy) features. The customers wheren't happy and it did cost the company a lot of money. It took the rest of us an tremendous amount of effort to get him to use a version control system and even then he managed to delete sourcecode for a version which was 'in the field'. If it wasn't such a friendly guy I'd almost start to think he was sabotaging the company on purpose.

[rich]

I agree. Over analysing the smaller differences between git, hg etc might be pointless for a solo developer but using a version control system still has many advantages over not using one. In this case the OP already uses CVS and wants to move to a Mercurial or Git.

Why distributed? one machine can bite the bucket so you are not out of the full repository. Especially since we tend to plug projects into the USB port (haven't fried one... yet).

I'd say that is one advantage of DVCS. Continuing to work unhindered without network access is high up my list of advantages when travelling, or on a local subset of machines at alternate locations. For most of my solo work I push to Github to give me an internet accessible offsite backup, so I sort of treat it more like a centralised system in that respect.

[milkop]

I use Git at work and it's very powerful and encourages branching by making switching back and forth really quick. If you're comfortable on a command line or have a decent gui or ide integration, it's not too hard to learn, though I still have to look up commands and resolutions as it can be enigmatic. The documentation is good though and, given its origins, it's probably not going anywhere soon. You're smart to be using source control even as a solo developer because disk space is cheap and the undo buffer is finite.

[ivaylo]

For a single developer who isn't sharing code this discussion is pointless. Git vs. svn vs. hg vs. cvs for a single guy, really?

I'm usually in such a situation. It is very benificial because a version control system allows to keep old versions. When writing software nothing is more important than being able to support older (mature) versions of software. It is also handy to distribute code over more than machine...

Absolutely. You do need A version control system, but if you are alone it doesn't really matter which one you pick. For one guy all mentioned are kinda the same. You want distributed? Just share a drive...

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

The most annoying cons of Git listed in a humorous way.

^ That's consistent with my experience of Git.
BTW I use svn, works fine with the Tortoise wrapper, though I would/should one day change to git and learn the ways but until there is a need... I can't be bothered.

[Jeroen3]

It took the rest of us an tremendous amount of effort to get him to use a version control system and even then he managed to delete sourcecode for a version which was 'in the field'.

That's very hard to do with git. You'd have to purposely remove blobs on the remote repository. And when you're poking on the remote you know you need to create a backup.

A major drawback of all of the above named version control systems is that they hide themselves in the local repository.
Meaning that anyone not familiar with it, or with disabled hidden folders, does not notice the .svn, .git or .hg and might even remove accidentally. As do some automated cleanup stuff or sync tools. Highly annoying.

[zapta]

About a year ago Perforce offered free 20 seats so that's what I'm using.

Seems they have extended that to their new Perforce Helix, but I have not tried it.

https://www.perforce.com/downloads/helix

Perforce is the most intuitive and easy to use version control system I ever used. I am not sure though if it has a hosted service or works offline as git does.

[Dielectric]

The most annoying cons of Git listed in a humorous way.

...and that's why I installed SourceTree.

[Karel]

The most annoying cons of Git listed in a humorous way.

...and that's why I installed SourceTree.

Is it better than Gitk?

[Dielectric]

...and that's why I installed SourceTree.

Is it better than Gitk?

Different, I haven't used gitk but it looks like a commandline wrapper, right?  SourceTree is a visual interface to git; I do about 99% of my development under Windows because of the rest of my toolchain, so it fits into that paradigm pretty well.  You still need to know what Git does and how, but my brain is full and I don't feel like learning more command line syntax so clicky-draggy is nice.