Mercurial popularity is stagnant

[Gregory Szorc]

On 8/21/14 4:05 AM, Peter Hull wrote:
> I'd say that hg and git are different enough to make using both
> awkward, but not different enough to give one a compelling technical
> advantage.
>
> Unfortunately, as we stand, git is more popular (in free software at
> least) so the rest is just momentum.
>
> For example Mozilla use hg for Firefox but recent projects like Rust
> have used git/github. I assume this is to garner greater visibility -
> I would be interested to hear from anyone at Mozilla on this.

I'm an employee of Mozilla and spend a considerable amount of time in 
VCS land.

The use of Git(Hub) at Mozilla is driven by multiple factors:

a) Popularity of Git
b) Perception that Git is "better" than Mercurial
c) It's easier to attract and retain contributors on GitHub

a and c are very similar. I subscribe to the theory that a large part of 
Git's success can be attributed to GitHub and that the strengths of 
GitHub have more to do with its market timing and web feature set than 
Git itself.

While Firefox is still in Mercurial, a number of Firefox developers do 
day-to-day work in Git and export to Mercurial for final checkin. They 
will cite a myriad of reasons that Git is better than Mercurial. I've 
had some success convincing people to move back to Mercurial after 
showing them non-mq workflows, evolve, advanced tricks with revsets and 
templates, and custom extensions to make their lives easier. But there 
are still a lot of people that insist Mercurial isn't up to par. I'm 
currently conducting a survey of Mozillians for their Mercurial feelings 
and hope to share these results at the sprint next weekend.