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by pgeorgi 3967 days ago
There are more DSCM implementations based on a DAG. (for example git, mercurial, bzr, monotone, codeville, fossil)

The only one that draws serious usability complaints all the time is git.

2 comments

To borrow a turn of phrase from Bjarne Stroustroup, there are two kinds of software: software people complain about, and software nobody uses.
A couple of years ago the others were in use as well.

git won for various reasons, but the UI complaints certainly aren't because people don't understand DAGs.

Yeah, the reason everyone complains about Git is because everyone uses git. SVN was the horse to beat 10 years ago, because everyone used it.
people complained about git's UI 10 years ago. They didn't complain (as much, by far) about the UI of the other DAG based DSCMs.
To be fair, some of the usability complaints aren't about the interface so much as things like:

* Unreasonable ideas about the idea that commits/history can be rewritten, so therefore "nothing is safe."

* Arguments over how some git commands are similarly named to svn commands, yet don't do the same thing. The svn way is the 'right' way, and git is 'doing it wrong,' but really it's just an argument about familiarity (sharing many traits with arguments over Mac vs. Windows keyboard shortcuts, for example).

* Complaining about a recoverable error because they don't know about the reflog.

* etc.

I'm sure there are legitimate complaints, but most of the complaints that I see are around things like that.