Mercurial: First Impressions

I decided to make the switch to Mercurial from Subversion.

One of the first things I noticed is the speed difference. Mercurial, despite the name and the reputation of distributed SCMs, seems to be slightly (half second or less) slower than Subversion. (despite hg being nicer to type than svn )

The other thing I noticed is that Mercurial doesn’t ignore certain files by default. Backup files show up in the status listings and are added if you try to add a directory.

Another thing that bugs me is the way Mercurial handles adding files. First, it doesn’t seem to want to add empty directories. hg status isn’t as nice as svn, but I’m sure it’s just something I haven’t got the hang of yet.

The main thing I like about Mercurial is the configuration. Give me an rc file over a directory any day!