[enobrev]

This is probably going to be a fairly unpopular opinion, since it seems git has won the popularity contest, but this is why I've always preferred bzr. Sure, it's a bit slower, but the interface is consistent. There aren't as many commands and they generally do the same thing every time. There aren't many switches on those commands either, besides the necessities, like defining revision numbers to apply the commands to.

I started using git about 6 months ago, primarily for github, and it's obviously a very powerful tool. Unfortunately, all that time that is generally saved by git's speed gets sunk into browsing around trying to understand how to use it. I have about 15 git projects right now and I still have no idea how to do some of the simplest things with git.

Maybe it's just because I came from years of svn, but I pretty much had bzr's interface figured out within a week. That whole week, I searched around for commands and whatnot and since then, it's been Incredibly rare for me to wonder what commands do what.

I'm not saying you should switch, as git is certainly an incredible tool. But if you live your life in the CLI, I would recommend trying bzr out. The simple interface is a dream in comparison.

Personally, if it weren't for github, I probably wouldn't use git at all for my own projects. That said, I may end up switching to git Because of github. And that's pretty much the only reason. Git's won the popularity contest an hence has a far larger ecosystem. But if I do make that switch, and that's a huge "if", I would miss bzr's CLI about as much as I miss childhood.

[StavrosK]

I used to use bzr too, then I switched to git because of the speed, and then to hg because git is impenetrable. Still, I miss bzr's ease of use and features (like any kind of branch you want).

I don't know why it's not as popular, it certainly deserves to be. I've had more frustrations in my short stints with git and hg than I ever had with bzr, and I don't think it's just because I know it better. For example, hg just pops up a vimdiff window for updating and then just leaves me stranded in a place I still don't know when I :q it in fear. bzr just gave me three files, .base, .mine, .other and left me to do whatever I wanted with it and commit whenever I'm comfortable.

I might just switch back to bzr again, I'm certainly losing more time now than I used to lose waiting for bzr to do its thing, and maybe it got faster now.

About git, why not use bzr-git? It worked wonderfully when I was using it.

[enobrev]

I started out with bzr-git a long time ago for small one-off projects where I wasn't getting too deep into the process. Well, that's not true, when I First dug into DVCS, I tried all three, and since I was on windows back then (all-linux, now), git failed early, as since it didn't have a native windows version. Later on, when I didn't necessarily have time to learn git due to short deadlines, I tried bzr-git a few times.

I don't have _real_ answer, besides that it doesn't "feel right" to use another tool on a git repo. I _want_ to know git better. It's just not very easy to learn without fully committing to it.

As for bzr, there have definitely been speed improvements in the past couple years. I can't say how much faster, as I'm used to it. The Only times I notice things running slowly are when branching a large remote repo for the first time and when my system is completely maxed (currently working on a dynamic video-generation project). Otherwise, I barely notice. And besides, how often does one actually wait for a return prompt when checking in? `bzr ci -m "whatever"` and alt-tab back to whatever I'm working on.

* editing for clarification

[StavrosK]

Well, I prefer to work in vim, so the speed with which my VCS does things is pretty important. Other than that, screw it, I just switched back to bzr. Both hg and bzr have very good git interoperability, so now I can use whichever of the three VCSes I like, even for the same working tree (I can have .git, .hg and .bzr in the same working tree, all updated, and push whichever I like).

I'm already enjoying bzr again, though. I also would like to learn git, but I have a startup to launch, and I don't think git is worth the (pretty big) effort at this stage.

[shangaslammi]

I absolutely agree with you. I used to use bzr for personal projects and compared to git it has way more intuitive commands and flags as well as smarter defaults. I use git nowadays mainly because of github and because it's what we use at work, but even after using git for two years I still need to constantly refer to the documentation for the various command flags.