Re: ongoing git vs hg (was: github.com/NetBSD/src 5 days old?)

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%bec.de@localhost>]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 08:55:05PM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote:
>     For one, Mercurial has no staging area.  That removes one level of
>     the three-level hierarchy from my toolset.  It’s hard to identify
>     exactly when in my workflow this causes issues, but I’ve started to
>     notice it.  For example, it’s not possible to commit a hunk from my
>     editor like I can with git and vim-gitgutter.
> 
> I do the same with magit -- the staging area is a supreme benefit!

The staging area is a general point of contention, even in the git
world. Interactive commits (commit -i) and incrementally amending
changes pretty much cover the general use cases without all the
cognitive load another level of changes has.

>     Mercurial also collapses all changes within a pull request
>     (changeset) into a single commit.  That removes the meaningful
>     difference between the top level (pull request) and the mid level
>     (commit) that I find helpful to narrate.  There is some ability when
>     working locally to create a bunch of commits like I would in git,
>     and then later squash them all using hg histedit.  But my reviewers
>     can’t see the individual commits, nor can they be seen or reverted
>     individually in the long term project history.
> 
> If this is the case it would also seem to be a major drawback to
> Mercurial.  There are further comments that suggest this may not be
> quite so bad as Kun makes it sound, and indeed that part of his problem
> might actually be specific to the workflow that his employer forces, but
> there's also some ongoing doubt about this.

I have no idea what the OP is talking about. Mercurial doesn't have pull
requests, neither does git BTW. So this is about some specific web UI or
review tool, but I don't even know which one.

Joerg