Git is exploding

[btn]

"bazaar" should be "bzr".

It's important to note that this graph is generated with data collected from people who have the popularity-content Debian package installed [1]. The "vote" metric it provides is probably a more accurate method for comparing which of the packages are in active use (it records accesses of the package's binaries in the last 30 days).

[1]: http://popcon.debian.org/

[mahmud]

I actually heard this: "Linus Torvalds, the creator of Git". That's like saying "George Lucas, director of American Graffiti".

[dilap]

I dunno, git spawned a revolution in how we think of version control (even mercurial came out of the initial discussions of git); that's a pretty big deal.

[weaksauce]

To be fair it's more like George Lucas, director of Star Wars ep. 1 if we are going chronologically.

[civilian]

I took the suggestions and re-made the graph: bazaar -> bzr, git-core added, and only votes used.

http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=subversion+gi...

[jessedhillon]

Can someone offer an explanation as to the sudden explosion in git's popularity in early 2010?

[aaronsw]

I think it's partly an artifact: due to a naming conflict, the git package in Debian used to be named "git-core" and was renamed "git" around then.

[jkyro]

I'd imagine that many projects moving to Gitorious/GitHub as opposed to, say, SourceForge has a role here. According to Wikipedia GitHub gained 1 million new repositories between July 2010 and April 2011. Sourceforge currently has some 300k projects. Not completely an apples to apples comparison but I'd think it gets the general idea. Technically, Git lends itself to "social coding" much better than SVN IMO.

[rickmb]

With many interesting open source projects migrating to or being started on GitHub, almost everyone depending on such tools will install Git for client usage.

It doesn't necessarily mean Git is that rapidly surpassing SVN in actual use as repository, that is likely to happen way slower than the growth of the install base.

[cpeterso]

I wonder if some popular Debian package happened to specify git as a package dependency, thus installing git for people who did not actually use it?

[davidw]

Positive network externalities: the more people who use it, the more valuable it is, which creates more incentives to use it yourself.

[Titanous]

GitHub?

[duodecim]

Another explanation could be that some packages started having Git as a requirement or dependency. I seem to remember there used to be a package related to the KDE desktop that required the SVN client. I'm not saying Git isn't becoming increasingly popular, but strange jumps might be explained by dependencies or renames, too.

[sagarm]

The "vote" metric measures actual use, not just installs.

See the bottom of this page: http://popcon.debian.org/

[rizumu]

Mercurial can be installed as a python package, but git is almost always installed as a OS package.

[dfc]

I am looking forward to seeing a graph of gnome3/kde/awesome/xmonad a couple of months after gnome3 hits testing.

[lloeki]

Throw in XFCE in that list for those missing Gnome 2 and can't stand Gnome 3 nor Unity.

[jentulman]

I'd like to suggest that git growth, enhanced by the network effect of github, might also be down to the the ease of entry into using version control provided by the excellent freely available documentation and tutorials.

I'm a one man team, by no means a guru but a competent coder, and git was the first version control system where I could make it past the documentation and get to actually using it day to day. I knew I should be using something, git was the something that made learning and implementing it very low cost.

[nirai]

Git's growing popularity is not an artifact of some packaging decisions by Debian. See Google insights for search: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-5&q=git%2Cs...

[CGamesPlay]

As a ratio, subversion has more people who use it recently than git does. Interesting, you would think that if people were using git, they would be using it much more frequently than subversion (due to local commits).

[btn]

"votes" is not a count of the number of uses, just that it has been used at least once in the last 30 days.

[sbarre]

I wonder how many people use git primarily for "git clone <github url>" and that's about it?

I have to admit we still use svn at work (although I've started using git at home on personal stuff) but at the moment the most frequent task I use git for is still simply cloning stuff from github.

[charlieflowers]

I wonder where TFS would be on this graph. Not that I think it competes well on merit with these others, but it still has some market forces pushing in its favor. It would be interesting to know how it compares.

[dfc]

TFS would not even be a blip on this graph;)

Assuming tfs is not toyota financing services it appears tfs is microsoft's souce code management system and therefore is most likely not going to show up on debian's popcon.

[dbattaglia]

This is just a guess, but I get the feeling their market share is probably not too large. We use it at my current job, and I actually enjoy using it. The integration build system combined with work item tracking and testing is nice if you have the ability to tailor your companies workflow to the "TFS way" (we are only partially there, still tracking bugs in our legacy intranet site). That said, it truly is a beast to setup/configure/maintain, to the point where I can't imagine any small MS shop bothering (esp. ones w/o a partner license and decent inhouse servers and possibly a build/deployment guy).

My last employer was still on sourcesafe (shudder!) when I left last year, and I'd bet they'll eventually go with something from SourceGear or Seapine before heading down the TFS path.

[amcintyre]

I think you might need a semilog-y scale to be able to see it.

[dfc]

TFS?

[edwingustafson]

indeed.com's Job Trends shows Subversion still king, Git growing, and Mercurial holding its own.

Subversion, Git, Mercurial Job Trends http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Subversion%2C+Git%2C+Mercu...

[peteforde]

Where could I get ahold of the stats tables used to generate these graphs?

[miztadux]

All the links are on Debian popularity contest front page: http://popcon.debian.org/

[sunils34]

i <3 gnuplot

[teflonhook]

I don't think this is an accurate representation of what is going on because market share is not being taken from the others.

[Palomides]

pretty sure any developer is likely to have several of these installed; I know I've needed to install them to pull stuff from various open source repositories, regardless of the fact I use git for personal projects

[based2]

thanks lt, all and github