Mercurial DVCS DevJam Presentation

2009/11/8

This past week, I gave a presentation to the DevJam meeting on the advantages of using Mercurial, a DVCS (Distributed Version Control System) over tools like Subversion, Perforce, and ClearCase.

I’ve been using a mercurial repository at bitbucket to host the build-test-data grails plugin, as well as a number of other things that I’ve done. We’re also using it at work to hold our grails applications. I find that the way Mercurial works fits better with my style of development over git, the other popular DVCS.

The turnout at the meeting was great, and a heated discussion followed the presentation (as it always does at that meeting).

I’ve checked the original keynote files along with a PDF version into a mercurial repository.

Here’s the presentation on SlideShare:

Mercurial DVCS presentation to DevJam 11/4/2009
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There are 5 comments in this article:

  1. 2009/11/19Daniel K say:

    Hi Ted – Thanks for sharing this presentation. At SeaJUG last night we had a brief group chat about Mercurial and git. Didn’t seem like many had used either. Where I’m working I know a few developers who are independently incorporating git into their work environment, but as an organization we’re probably going to stay split between using CVS and SVN. Migrating tends to come down to either key personnel driving that push, or a big enough hurt to make it worth the effort.

    Cheers,

    Dan

  2. 2009/11/19tednaleid say:

    @Dan I think it makes sense at an organizational level to stick with the source control tool they’re comfortable with if there isn’t any pain. At an individual developer level, I think that learning a DVCS is worthwhile as there are other kinds of problems that you can solve with them. You also might find that you’d become one of the “key personnel driving that push” after finding some of the benefits.

    My opinion is that centralized version control will be around for a long time, but knowledge of DVCS will be used in more and more projects (and will therefore be worth knowing).

  3. 2009/11/25Bil say:

    Fabulous Ted.

    I’m in the middle of working on an HG/CVS transition and this information will be invaluable for reducing the fears of our developer culture.

    Thank you!!!!!

  4. 2009/11/25tednaleid say:

    @Bil, thanks! I hope the transition goes smoothly, let me know if you run into any issues.

  5. 2009/12/21Ted Naleid » Hooking up Hudson to your bitbucket mercurial account say:

    [...] I’ve been using Mercurial as my personal revision control system for a while now. [...]

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