Is Git ready to be recommended to my boss? [closed]

Answer 1

Just in follow-up to Spoike's mention of TortoiseHg for Mercurial, the windows standalone download for Bazaar does include TortoiseBzr these days, although it is marked as experimental.

I tried it quite a few versions ago and found it unstable, but it may have improved greatly since then (especially if they are willing to package it with the official Bazaar release).

If you're really after a decentralised version control with a tortoise like interface, I would give both a go and see how they fair.

E.

Answer 2

Do most companies of any typical size really need distributed source control?

Git works well for open source projects where people from all over the world are collaborating on a project at vastly different times, where the validity of check-ins is determined by merit and a web of trust.

At a company where, say, a commit requires QA analysis or a configuration manager's approval and/or documentation, or to reconcile a revision number with that in a bug report, I would submit that distributed control such as Git really does not make sense, in the sense that the paradigm shift is not warranted; that it does not yet fit well with existing CM processes (a social problem); that it does not integrate well with existing tools, third-party and otherwise; and that it has poor Windows support.

Not that it's not good; it's that I am quite skeptical to believe that it's the right tool for most corporate environments. I look forward to some of the other responses for insight.

Answer 3

Depends on the team. If you're part of a technologically savvy team, then git is wonderful (and often more than wonderful). But if some people arn't comfortable on the command line, there could be some trouble (because tortoisegit is in its infancy and all the other GUIs I've come across, frankly, suck).

If you've got not-so-techie people to deal with (designers, higher-up managers, etc.), I'd go with something like subversion. TortoiseSVN is wonderful (and fairly easy to use), and svn's got maybe 80% of the awesome git has.

Answer 4

When it comes to graphical tools for git, the only useful tool I've used so far is gitk (which visualizes the revision tree for you) and I've been using git for the past half year myself, As someone else here put it, TortoiseGit is still very early and has some kinks to work out.

At work we've been evaluating three different DVCS's (namely git, mercurial (hg) and bazaar) and had a full packed evening presenting them for the rest of the company. Mercurial received most positive response and there is a Tortoise variant of it.

I'd suggest you do the same thing. Find someone who can present some alternative to git (such as mercurial or bazaar) and do a presentation together on DVCS at your company. It is more important to tell your coworkers how awesome DVCS is rather than the boss because in the end they will be using it. So it's more educational if they have been exposed to such tools and get a taste of it for themselves.

When we presented it we also assumed people didn't do version control so we explained quickly basic concepts such as checkin-checkout vs. commit-merge and why people version control. Basically it was like Eric Sink's articles on version control but stripped down to bare essentials.

Since you're going from VSS (and I'm so sorry) you might want to have a look at SVN. However as I see it, the only difference between distributed and the centralized approach is the added complexity of sharing code through a peer-to-peer looking network.

Answer 5

I am a newcomer at GIT, and after using it for a a couple of weeks have to say that its really great, once you get the hang of the command line prompts.

To answer your question "Is Git ready?" => I think it is (except for the command line learning curve.)

I think you and your team/company should ask yourselves "Are you ready for git?." Once you start using it you will clearly have alot of power at your fingertips.

Your first steps to learning git are:

• Reading the git guides at github.
• Head over to Pragmatic Programmers and d/l the "free" Insder to Github
• You can also pick up the Pragmatic Version Control Using Git

Answer 6

When I was first exposed to Git, my first reaction was 'I just don't Git it'. I saw many powerful tools, but they weren't very intuitive. As I became used to using Git, I realized that the only feature that I really liked was quick cheap and easy branches.

I tried a few of the graphical front ends, including the GTK one that ships with Git. I found those to be more confusing than command line operations.

If your company is used to Subversion and you need to change to a DVCS, try Mercurial. Subversion users will feel at home very quickly. However, few people can really wrap their head around Mercurial's idea of what a branch should be .. which kind of shoots using a DVCS in the foot in the first place (barring being able to commit locally and push/pull to others prior to pushing to the main repository).

I work daily with Subversion and Mercurial, which suits all of my projects quite well. I think, unless you need Git's power of branching and ability to edit previous revisions ... Subversion or HG is going to be your best bet. I would not recommend Git as anyone's first exposure to a DVCS, but just my opinion and experience with it.