Switch from SVN to xxx ?

[Nicolas Pinault]

Hi all,

This message is sent to Bazaar and Mercurial user lists.

I work in a small dev team.
Long time ago, I introduced Visual Source Safe for source versionning. 
Why VSS ? Because projects which where of a concern were Visual Studio 
projects. As VSS was in the place, we also used VSS for other kinds of 
projects. But VSS is a nightmare. So, after years, I switched most 
projects to Subversion. SVN is incredibly better than VSS.  I like SVN. 
I find it easy to understand its way of working (even if is this not the 
case of some of my colleagues). I find it fast and reliable. I use 
TortoiseSVN (a little) and Subclipse (a lot). Eclipse integration is a 
must have. We have many projects managed with Eclipse (cross-compilation 
projects for embedded systems).
I read many things about distributed versionning systems for years now. 
I have spent many hours reading articles and comparisons between DSCM. 
It is hard to get a conclusion because most articles are outdated. 
Especially since Bazaar 2.x. It seems that Bazaar and Mercurial are the 
finalists (Maybe because I like Python language). Apparently Git is not 
correctly supported under windows and is harder to understand.
So, Bazaar or Mercurial.
I have 2 problems :
- I still wonder what kind of benefice I can expect if I switch to 
Bazaar or Mercurial.
- If I switch to one of them, which one ?

I have read Bazaar and Mercurial documents. Of course, each one claims 
to be simpler, better... than the other. For now, I can see only one 
real difference : speed. But we don't have very big projects. Only quite 
big projects. So speed should not be of a concern.

I think the best is to ask to real users. Especially the ones who 
switched from SVN to Bazaar or Mercurial.
Any advice, comment... is welcome.

Best regards,
Nicolas