Can TortoiseHg, TortoiseGit and Git Extensions Peacefully Coexist?

Question

This is on a 64 bit Windows Machine, also running Visual Studio 2010.

A similar question (re TortoiseSVN and TortoiseHg) was asked 3 years ago, but the software was several versions earlier and addressed TortoiseSVN rather than TortoiseGit. Please keep this in mind if tempted to close this thread.

Will the 3 pieces of software coexist peacefully? Any stability concerns? I often see the checkmark icons attached to commited files "blinking". Any issues that anyone has experienced? I will be mainly using mercurial via the command line but am tempted to try TortoiseGit or Git Extensions if I experiment with Git since I still find it very hard to grasp, but find mercurial much easier to use. My main reason for trying to stick with learning Git is that I find Github more attractive (due mainly to it's size) than Bitbucket. I have never used subversion or any other version control software so comparison to subversion's way of doing things is of less use to me.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I have TortoiseHG and TortoiseGit installed on my desktop computer, along side with the Visual Studio extension for HG and Git and the command line version of Git... Never had any problem of stability caused by the cohabitation.

The only problematic case I see is a folder containing a .hg AND a .git directory. I didn't tested this, but I suppose the folder icon won't be correct at all ;)

Speaking of the icon overlays, I deactivated them for theses reasons :

• The so-called overlay "server" takes a noticeable amount of ressources
• Even so the icon is often wrong and you have to refresh through the contextual menu
• It really clutters the file explorer layout

Concerning git learning, only one advice : don't try to reproduce the workflow you're using with mercurial. Some key concepts are different and it is easier to start totally from scratch. I learned this painfully when I started to use github for some projects...

Answer 2

I have TortoiseSVN, TortoiseGit, TortoiseHg, Git Extensions ( and whole lot of others) on my box and they all work together peacefully. Recent versions of TortoiseX are designed to coexist and should not cause any problems when they are installed together.

To increase performance of the icon overlays, you can go to the settings of the TortoiseX and choose the include and exclude paths ( for your working copies / repos) and ensure that they monitor only specific paths.

BTW, if you are learning Git, TortoiseGit is not the place to start. IMO, it is meant for people comfortable with SVN and TortoiseSVN and to help them make a transition to Git. TortoiseGit is a very very limited interface to Git ( for example, you won't be intorduced to the index at all, which is a very useful and powerful concept in Git)