On: I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla

[bvrmn]

> I would prefer SVN over git

Yes SVN has so much better CLI especially for things like

  * merging

  * history navigation

  * searching commit messages, filenames and file content

  * bisecting

I'm filled with joy remembering good old SVN days and how my life was a way easier.

[cmrdporcupine → bvrmn]

Yeah, SVN was terrible. Its chief advantage was it was just less terrible than CVS and carried roughly the same workflow, so wasn't unfamiliar to people. It was basically CVS with atomic commits and a better interface and transport layer. You could drop SVN into a CVS shop without ruffling many feathers -- and back then I found most people were quite resistant to "novelty" in revision control systems, so SVN fit into that.

I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with a centralized revision control system. I used Piper/CitC at Google for years and it could be ... tolerable. Many people just end up using git this way anyways.

But SVN shipped with garbage merge-on-merge support, and that was the deal-breaker for me.