Git vs. Mercurial

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Mercurial
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Mercurial is a free, distributed source control management tool. It handles projects of any size and boasts an easy and intuitive interface. Mercurial handles projects of any size and kind. Every clone contains the whole project history, so most actions are local, fast and convenient. Mercurial supports a multitude of workflows and can enhance its functionality with extensions.N/A
Pricing
GitMercurial
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GitMercurial
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GitMercurial
Considered Both Products
Git
Chose Git
The two main alternatives to Git that I know about are Mercurial and Subversion. I've never used either one, but I know a bit about Subversion. From what I remember, Subversion requires a server. I don't anyone using any other source control other than Git, it seems to have …
Chose Git
Git is by far the best version control system out there. It's open source, free, and fast. No other version control system I've ever used has had all three features.
Chose Git
Those products work well with small teams but when you have a large company with a huge group of developers working they introduce complexity at the moment of keeping an eye on the code and deal with versioning stuff. Every single tool nowadays offers integration with Git which …
Chose Git
Git is my favorite among all of the version control systems out there. It follows the Linux software philosophy of being built by many loosely coupled and small components that do one thing well. It's incredibly open, and its adoption in the open source community seems to be …
Mercurial
Chose Mercurial
When we chose Mercurial it was more popular from perspectives than Git and we have too many problems with the Microsoft team foundation solution. We also want to move from a centralized version of source control to a distributed one. We also were working more and more via the …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
GitMercurial
Small Businesses
GitHub
GitHub
Score 9.0 out of 10
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
GitHub
GitHub
Score 9.0 out of 10
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Perforce Helix Core
Perforce Helix Core
Score 6.3 out of 10
Perforce Helix Core
Perforce Helix Core
Score 6.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GitMercurial
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(36 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GitMercurial
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
GIT is good to be used for faster and high availability operations during code release cycle. Git provides a complete replica of the repository on the developer's local system which is why every developer will have complete repository available for quick access on his system and they can merge the specific branches that they have worked on back to the centralized repository. The limitations with GIT are seen when checking in large files.
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Open Source
If you generally think that to develop software you have to choose one repository, then in my opinion you have to choose between Mercurial and Git, there is not other solution. Mercurial also has a good merge tool which i can recommend. This gives you the flexibility to push just the "part of the feature", and is much better suited in the case where the "part of feature" and some other "part of the feature" both contain changes to the same file.
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Pros
Open Source
  • Ability to create branches off current releases to modify code that can be tested in a separate environment.
  • Each developer had their own local copy of branches so it minimizes mistakes being made.
  • Has a user-friendly UI called Git Gui that users can use if they do not like using the command line.
  • Conflicts are displayed nicely so that developers can resolve with ease.
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Open Source
  • Branch
  • Distributed architecture
  • Stable
  • Platform independent
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Cons
Open Source
  • There can be quite a number of commands once you get to the advanced features and functionality of Git. Takes time to master.
  • Doesn't handle static assets (ie: videos, images, etc.) well. Although in the recent years, new functionality has been introduced to address this.
  • Many different GUIs, many people (including myself) opt to just use the command-line.
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Open Source
  • Integration with visual studio
  • More integrated tools
  • When I install Mercurial I always have to do a hard restart of my computer.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
Git has met all standards for a source control tool and even exceeded those standards. Git is so integrated with our work that I can't imagine a day without it.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Usability
Open Source
Git is easy to use most of the time. You mostly use a few commands like commiting, fetch/pull, and push which will get you by for most of time.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Open Source
I am not sure what the official Git support channels are like as I have never needed to use any official support. Because Git is so popular among all developers now, it is pretty easy to find the answer to almost any Git question with a quick Google search. I've never had trouble finding what I'm looking for.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Open Source
It's easy to set up and get going.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source
I've used both Apache Subversion & Git over the years and have maintained my allegiance to Git. Git is not objectively better than Subversion. It's different.
The key difference is that it is decentralized. With Subversion, you have a problem here: The SVN Repository may be in a location you can't reach (behind a VPN, intranet - etc), you cannot commit. If you want to make a copy of your code, you have to literally copy/paste it. With Git, you do not have this problem. Your local copy is a repository, and you can commit to it and get all benefits of source control. When you regain connectivity to the main repository, you can commit against it. Another thing for consideration is that Git tracks content rather than files. Branches are lightweight and merging is easy, and I mean really easy.
It's distributed, basically every repository is a branch. It's much easier to develop concurrently and collaboratively than with Subversion, in my opinion. It also makes offline development possible. It doesn't impose any workflow, as seen on the above linked website, there are many workflows possible with Git. A Subversion-style workflow is easily mimicked.
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Open Source
When we chose Mercurial it was more popular from perspectives than Git and we have too many problems with the Microsoft team foundation solution. We also want to move from a centralized version of source control to a distributed one. We also were working more and more via the Internet with our source control so distributed version was only solution.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • Git has saved our organization countless hours having to manually trace code to a breaking change or manage conflicting changes. It has no equal when it comes to scalability or manageability.
  • Git has allowed our engineering team to build code reviews into its workflow by preventing a developer from approving or merging in their own code; instead, all proposed changes are reviewed by another engineer to assess the impact of the code and whether or not it should be merged in first. This greatly reduces the likelihood of breaking changes getting into production.
  • Git has at times created some confusion among developers about what to do if they accidentally commit a change they decide later they want to roll back. There are multiple ways to address this problem and the best available option may not be obvious in all cases.
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Open Source
  • Improve time in merging
  • Branching enables us to keep separate version per customer
  • Good tool for programmers is sometimes a reason to stay
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