The main difference between GIT and Mercurial is that GIT is more advanced and used by many developers in the industry while Mercurial is simple and used by beginners and non-technical community.
GIT and Mercurial are two version control systems distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL v2. A version control system is a software that allows the developers to coordinate work and to maintain a history of tasks. Although it is not necessary to use a version control system for small projects, it is essential for large, complex projects. These software programs save all the changes made to the source code. They also store the state of the project at each point of modification. Moreover, different stages of the project are called versions. The developer can go to any version he wants.
Key Areas Covered
1. What is GIT
– Definition, Functionality
2. What is Mercurial
– Definition, Functionality
3. Difference Between GIT and Mercurial
– Comparison of Key Differences
Key Terms
GIT, Mercurial, Version Control Systems
What is GIT
GIT is a version control system that helps the developers to coordinate their work. GIT was initially developed by Linux Torvalds while developing the Linux Kernel. Currently, Junio Hamano maintains it. GIT allows tracking the modifications made to the files. It provides a nonlinear workflow and provides a distributed environment. It also improves performance and data integrity.
Furthermore, GIT provides a powerful branching model. Thus, users can create, delete and change the branch anytime without affecting the commits. In situations such as finding bugs, the developer can make a branch, do the change and then delete that branch. Moreover, staging is the process of adding files to the next commit. GIT supports this concept. Overall, GIT is fast, reliable, secure and lightweight.
What is Mercurial
Mercurial is a free, distributed source control management tool. It supports various operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc. Moreover, it is capable of handling any project. Since each clone consists of project history, most actions are fast and convenient in Mercurial. The developer can extend its functionalities using extensions. The Mercurial documentation is easier to follow. Thus, the user can easily understand and use it. Furthermore, users who have been using other version systems such as Subversion can easily adapt to Mercurial.
Mercurial has a command line, but it also provides a graphical user interface extension. furthermore, all the programs are invoked as arguments to its driver program. This software is mainly written in Python programming. Additionally, it has a binary implementation written in C language. Overall, Mercurial provides high performance and scalability. It is capable of managing plain text and binary files as well.
Difference Between GIT and Mercurial
Definition
GIT is a distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development while Mercurial is a distributed version control tool for software developers.
Developer
Linux Torvalds was the initial developer while the Junio Hamano is the current developer of GIT. Matt Mackall was the developer of Mercurial.
Written In
Furthermore, GIT is written in C, Shell, Perl, Tcl, and Python while Mercurial is written in C and Python. Hence, this is an important difference between GIT and Mercurial.
History
Also, the ability to change the version history is another difference between GIT and Mercurial. GIT allows the developer to change the version history. By default, Mercurial does not allow the developer to change the version history (can change the last commit).
Staging concept
Moreover, GIT supports staging (adding files for the next commit), but there is no staging area concept in Mercurial.
Branching
One other difference between GIT and Mercurial is that GIT provides better branching than Mercurial.
Simplicity
Mercurial is simpler than GIT.
Used by
More importantly, many developers in the industry use GIT while Mercurial is suitable for less experienced users. Thus, this is the main difference between GIT and Mercurial.
Conclusion
In brief, Mercurial and GIT are two version control systems. The main difference between GIT and Mercurial is that GIT is more advanced and used by many developers in the industry while Mercurial is simple and used by beginners and non-technical community.
Reference:
1.“Git.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Apr. 2019, Available here.
2.“Mercurial.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Mar. 2019, Available here.
Image Courtesy:
1.”Logo for Git” via By Jason Long – (CC BY 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia
2.”Mercurial commands and their relations” By Axaluss – Own work (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia
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