Keith Packard discusses why robust repository formats are important for any version control software. This is really an important point when evaluating the robustness of any version control system, as you want to avoid the corruption of all your data due to a disk failure and an unfortunate way to store the tracked information.
One sad point, as he’s a person I certainly admire for his work on free software, is that, while praising the way git faces that problem, he unfairly bashes Mercurial (besides other VCSs). The fact is that the comparison done is not correct. While the comparison used to measure store size is between packed git and standard Mercurial, the robustness of the repository format comparison uses the unpacked git and standard Mercurial.
I believe this is more of a handwaving issue than any real concern about how git or Mercurial are doing the job.
Continuar leyendo «Repository formats matter a lot in Mercurial»