Bazaar, Mercurial or other for single user version control? [closed]

Question

Which version control system would you recommend for:

• single user
• looking for simple, easy to use
• generally small simple projects
• working on windows
• usually coding python
• no server

Use would be more finding old code than complicated branching situations.

From other similar posts, Bazaar and Mercurial seem the best distributed version control systems for my needs. I'm somewhat leaning towards Bazaar as it seems simpler.

The main complaint I read about Baazar was that it was slow, but speed was to be improved in version 2, to be released this summer. The new version has not yet been released, but there is a 2.0.0rc2.

I'm wondering if anything has changed recently or if anyone has any strong feelings on the subject.

EDIT: After reading the responses and browsing some alternatives, I'm going with Bazaar, at least for the moment. For my needs, the products mentioned seemed rather similar. Bazaar has documentation specifically aimed at a solo developer and seems rather easy to use. Others seem more aimed at groups or those with central servers. Other systems may be as good, but I thought starting to use something was more important than spending time trying to find the perfect program.

Thanks, everyone!

(Should I have written this as an edit, an answer or a comment?)

Answer 1

If you're just single developer working on small projects, any version control system should be fast enough.

I'm a Mercurial developer myself and will of course recommend that :-) I like how Mercurial has one central concept: the changeset graph. The graph resides inside a repository (a clone). You can have several lines of development in the same clone. This can be in the form of multiple heads, perhaps marked with the bookmarks extension or as named branches. You can also use several clones to keep things separated, or you can go back and forth: it is easy to separate a combined clone (use hg clone -r REV to obtain part of the revision graph). See this blog post for pretty pictures.

For Windows (and other platforms too) you have TortoiseHg, which gives you a very nice graphical interface. TortoiseHg also integrates with many excellent plugins for Mercurial, in particular the record extension, which lets you pick out individual changes from a file when you commit. Using that, you can edit several files, and then commit those changes as several independent changesets.

Finally, you should also know about Mercurial: The Definitive Guide, the free online book about Mercurial.

Answer 2

Bazaar is very good for your needs, and I'm doubt you found speed issues with your projects. Bazaar has very nice GUI front-end called Bazaar Explorer which I'd recommend over TortoiseBzr. (Bazaar Explorer bundled into standard 2.0 installer now.)

Of course if you choose Mercurial you don't lose much.

So you'd better test one and another and make your choice. Every zealot will recommend you his favorite.