[couchand]

The world's inconsistent internet connections are a great reason to require distributed version control. I'm often trying to work from a location without a reliable connection to the internet, be it a plane, train or bus, a coffee shop with spotty internet or a meetup. Requiring a connection to a server kills productivity in those situations.

Perhaps there is something to be said for Mercurial, but unless you were previously on Subversion it's certainly not that it's easy to learn.

[collyw]

Yes, but I would guess that non distributed would suit 90% of use cases. I imagine most software is still developed in one physical location.

[eropple]

Your imagination ignores days where you WFH (like I am right now), it ignores remote workers, it ignores work while traveling, it ignores outsourcing, it ignores open source development.

But who cares, because Git or Mercurial can be used in a centralized manner if you want. But it doesn't have to be. That's why it's good.

[gnaritas]

He's not ignoring anything; he said non-distributed would handle 90% of use cases and that's probably somewhat true. Saying hey I'm one of those 10% isn't a rebuttal to what he said.

[eropple]

I definitely want to see some substantiation that everything I just enumerated is less than 10% of software development, by whatever metrics he wants: number of projects, lines of code, whatever.

[gnaritas]

Those things don't require distributed source control; they simply require remote access. Substantiation simply isn't necessary, you haven't given scenarios that demand distribution and you can't, because honestly there aren't any. Distributed source control is a preference, a style, not a necessity. Central repositories with remote access handle all of those use cases. Other than perhaps the Linux kernel, there's very little software that can't be written just fine with remote works and centralized repositories.

[eropple]

- Central repositories handle me working from a coffee shop with spotty wi-fi. No, I am not going to wait to commit until I get home, because I want a set of commits as I go so I can revert if I screw up.

- Central repositories handle me working on a plane. Same thing.

- Central repositories handle your Chinese subsidiary being constrained to a slow and spotty pipe (they actually exported our tree with git-svn and used git on their end--this was at a NASDAQ company, it's not like anyone was cheaping out, it was the best available).

That you are willing to work around the deficiencies of centralization does not mean they are not deficient. Don't be ridiculous.