Mercurial popularity is stagnant

Tue Aug 19 12:56:05 UTC 2014

Just as a moot discussion; that is, as a thought experiment which completely ignores the onerous reality of how; do we really think that the lack of a great web hosting is the driver? I get that a great web hosting service lowers the barrier to adaption, but I don't see it as the driver. Git has must-have FOS software driving it, and then, in spite of cryptic syntax and design criteria that may be questionable in some scenarios, but excellent for its design case, it has some great web-hosting that significantly lowers the barriers created by the odd syntax. Folks deep in FOS world must learn Git; folks who must use Git find that Atlassian's hosting service makes it feasible for other projects, and since they've had to learn and familiarize already --.

The must-have part is what would drive a number of folks to use Git even when it was mind-warping. I think if Hg is to take root, it needs must-have software that forces people to use it even when reluctant. If that sounds right, how do we get that? Barring that, what Git-killer feature can pull folks in? And when I ask that last question, bear in mind that Git has some top-notch developers capable of rapidly expanding its feature set, but that are mostly focused on the single-use case (kernel).  Honestly, I'm not hopeful. Then again, I think Hg is a great product even if no one uses it but me.

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-----Original Message-----
From: mercurial-bounces at selenic.com [mailto:mercurial-bounces at selenic.com] On Behalf Of cowwoc
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 8:26 AM
To: Augie Fackler
Cc: mercurial at selenic.com
Subject: Re: Mercurial popularity is stagnant

Yet another stake in Mercurial's heart:
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2013/12/19/dvcs-and-git-2013/

Mercurial support is now the #1 most voted feature request in Atlassian Stash but they have repeatedly stated they do not plan to add support in the foreseeable future: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STASH-2469

Some are hinting that these trends are deterring them from adding support. According to the first link, Mercurial saw 1.41% increased adoption across 3 years, while Git saw a 27.09% increase. That's a huge difference. I'll repeat my question: what can we do to turn this around?
I'm not sure I buy the argument that blogging about Mercurial will close the gap.

Gili

On 01/07/2014 1:36 PM, Augie Fackler wrote:
> On Jun 30, 2014, at 1:35 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc at bbs.darktech.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'd like to bring your attention to:
>> http://www.google.ca/trends/explore?hl=en-US&q=mercurial,+git,+github
>> ,+bitbucket&cmpt=q&content=1
>>
>> It seems to me that GitHub is directly responsible for Git's
>> popularity skyrocketing in 2009. By comparison, Mercurial's
>> popularity seems to be stagnant for a while. Bitbucket initially did
>> a decent job, but ever since they got bought out by Atlassian all
>> public announcements emphasize Git support and don't mention Mercurial at all.
>>
>> Case in point:
>> http://blog.bitbucket.org/2012/12/10/feature-branches-just-got-better
>> /
>>
>> How do we go about reversing this trend?
> I think one thing that would help would be users blogging more about their workflows and how hg makes them productive. I keep meaning to do this, but I have too many things pulling at my attention to ever manage to get started.
>
>> Gili
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://mercurial.808500.n3.nabble.com/Mercurial-popularity-is-stagnan
>> t-tp4011549.html Sent from the General mailing list archive at
>> Nabble.com.
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