Ruby on Rails Moving Source Repository to Git
Some circles are abuzz about the news that the Ruby on Rails project is switching its source repository from good old Subversion to Git.
Switching to a distributed version control system from a centralized one is unquestionably (well, here’s a dissenting voice) a good move. Wikipedia summarizes the difference between the two approaches nicely.
But Git is not the only DVCS by a long shot; there’s Bazaar, Mercurial, Darcs, Monotone, and others, each with its fierce partisans. Bazaar is used by projects like Drupal and Mailman; Mozilla uses Mercurial; Pidgin uses Monotone; and on and on. As more projects migrate from centralized version control to decentralized, it’ll be interesting to see how the choice of systems shakes out.
Git has built up a lot of momentum in its short life, largely because its creator is Linus Torvalds, who inspires great allegiance. (He designed it in 2005 after there was licensing trouble with BitKeeper, the proprietary source-control tool that until then had held the Linux source repository.)
Git is not necessarily better than its competitors — speed is its primary advantage in my experience — but in the open-source world, popularity can breed merit. The more people latch onto a piece of software, the more development attention it gets and the better it becomes. Ruby on Rails has a pretty enthusiastic userbase; this news can only be good for Git.
What do you use? What do you think?
See Also:
