Stacks88.7K

Followers64.6K

+ 1

Votes6.6K

Mercurial

Stacks198

Followers162

+ 1

Votes93

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Git vs Mercurial: What are the differences?

What is Git? Fast, scalable, distributed revision control system. Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

What is Mercurial? A distributed version control system. Mercurial is dedicated to speed and efficiency with a sane user interface. It is written in Python. Mercurial's implementation and data structures are designed to be fast. You can generate diffs between revisions, or jump back in time within seconds.

Git and Mercurial can be primarily classified as "Version Control System" tools.

"Distributed version control system" is the top reason why over 1441 developers like Git, while over 15 developers mention "Easy-to-grasp system with nice tools" as the leading cause for choosing Mercurial.

Git is an open source tool with 28.1K GitHub stars and 16.3K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Git's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Git has a broader approval, being mentioned in 3932 company stacks & 4776 developers stacks; compared to Mercurial, which is listed in 26 company stacks and 16 developer stacks.

Pros of Git

Pros of Mercurial

17
A lot easier to extend than git
16
Easy-to-grasp system with nice tools
13
Works on windows natively without cygwin nonsense
11
Written in python
7
Fast
7
Free
5
Better than Git
5
Best GUI
3
Better than svn
2
Hg inc
1
Consistent UI
1
TortoiseHg - Unified free gui for all platforms
1
Native support to all platforms
1
Easy-to-use
1
Free to use
1
Few surprises -- it just works
1
Good user experience

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Cons of Git

Cons of Mercurial

16
Hard to learn
10
Inconsistent command line interface
7
Worst documentation ever possibly made
7
Easy to lose uncommitted work
5
Awful merge handling
3
Unexistent preventive security flows
3
Rebase hell
3
Even simple tasks are hard
2
Inscrutable interface and docs
2
When --force is disabled, cannot rebase
2
Ironically even die-hard supporters screw up badly

0
Track single upstream only
0
Does not distinguish between local and remote head

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- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Git?

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

What is Mercurial?

Mercurial is dedicated to speed and efficiency with a sane user interface. It is written in Python. Mercurial's implementation and data structures are designed to be fast. You can generate diffs between revisions, or jump back in time within seconds.

What companies use Git?

What companies use Mercurial?

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What tools integrate with Git?

What tools integrate with Mercurial?

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Blog Posts

Git Detached Head: What This Means and How to Recover

Aug 19, 2020 at 6:16PM

CloudBees

520

Git Switch Branch: Everything You Need to Know

Jul 15, 2020 at 3:10PM

CloudBees

798

Learn Git with Bitbucket Cloud

Mar 4, 2020 at 5:14PM

Atlassian

450

Automatically deploy a Gatsby site to Firebase Hosting

Jun 26, 2019 at 4:11PM

CircleCI

1278

How Raygun Processes Millions of Error Events Per Second

May 17, 2018 at 1:38AM

Raygun

+22

8031

How Stitch Consolidates A Billion Records Per Day

Sep 28, 2017 at 4:58AM

Stitch

+22

12758

How CircleCI Processes 4.5 Million Builds Per Month

Jul 13, 2017 at 9:32AM

CircleCI

+34

39387

How LaunchDarkly Serves Over 4 Billion Feature Flags Daily

Sep 9, 2016 at 2:06AM

LaunchDarkly

+30

13772

What are some alternatives to Git and Mercurial?

GitHub

GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.

SVN (Subversion)

Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs of a wide variety of users and projects, from individuals to large-scale enterprise operations.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users.

Perforce

Visibility, access control, workflow and code management for Git environments. Flexibility of collaborating on the same codebase and code reviews using any combination of Perforce and Git workflows and tools without compromise.

GitLab

GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.

See all alternatives

Interest over time

News about Git

Join us at Git Merge 2018 in Barcelona

(github.com)

Dec 11, 2017

Git workflow best practices: 5 tips to get your code to production fast

(raygun.com)

Dec 4, 2017

GitBot – automating boring Git operations with CI

(about.gitlab.com)

Nov 2, 2017