Does git-svn now handle svn:externals properly? I can't find anything saying it now has support. I'd love to switch to git as my client, but we have upwards of 70 externals for libraries we maintain, and converting those to git submodules is not an option. Well it is, but it is far more work than simply using git as a client.
I don't think Git submodules were added until 2009 (at least that's what the commit history looks like). We deployed with SVN at least six years ago, long before git could compete.
Still, I would like to use git as my svn client, but it's just not a suitable replacement without externals handled nicely.
I had some merge problems with SVN too (like a 6 hour merge session twice a year), but that may be due to my limited SVN knowledge and poor branch setup.
As an aside, I changed jobs to another place using SVN, and when they started moving to Git I changed jobs again. Still using SVN! :-)