SVN or git?

@film_firl poked @WordPressVIP to ask

@nacin piled on with

@Viper007Bond tried to defend the team, and added

GigaOM is in the process of migrating to git. Our recent redesign all happened in git, and the last of our properties will be moved as soon as a few long-running feature branches are launched. Our motivation is not unlike Etsy’s: “re-examining and adding new tools to the mix seem[s] like a healthy trait to have in our culture, [and] the switch to Git would increase engineer happiness.”

But the switch isn’t all wins. Git has no equivalent to svn cp, which would have helped preserve file history through the refactoring we did for the redesign. Even git mv is sloppy about preserving file histories. Just as frustrating, if not more so, are the hoops git users have to jump through to get what svn users enjoy with svn:externals.

Git has a number of useful features, not least of which is Github itself. I like git, but to claim it’s unequivocally better than svn is a leap too far.