Xcode 4 and version control - But which one?

Question

I have a question, the answer isn't really hard technically, but I am more looking for the experience of most advanced programmers here.

So like many noobs, I am doing my version control in the crappiest way, which is to copy paste my project directory and rename it with the current date/time. You will agree that it's a quite limited solution :P

I decided to learn version control system(s), but I am facing many choice, and I would like to know what are the best for your points of view ?

• Using Xcode integrated version control (git or anything else), with organizer, cloning, commits from xcode etc. I mean totally or almost controlled by Xcode ?
• Ignoring Xcode letting him think there no version control and doing it myself in command line ?
• A merge of the two above ? How ?

And then :

• Using git ? Github is very popular and powerful, but you must learn git, and learn it hard.
• Mercurial ? It seems more friendly.
• Something else ?

It would be priceless to have some feedbacks about more experienced people, so that me and many others I hope can choose their paths when facing the VCS wall :-)

Thanks a lot !!!

Answer 1

First: Use a VCS at all.

The rest: Mercurial is nice, but Apple went with Git for Xcode. So if you want source control integration within the IDE, Git is the best option.
The things I miss most when working with Xcode & Mercurial are the "Modified" indicators in the source list and the integrated diff-viewer. (Which is pretty good in Xcode IMO)

The actions you perform in the Organizer are a bit limited at the moment, but you can always fall back to Terminal.app for that.

Answer 2

I can only recommend git. Merging is easy, I remember the days when a merge conflicts occured with SVN, it was pain, horrible pain to resolve those. You can easily start a local repository with git, especially if you are the only one developer.

Have a look at Which SCM system to use with Xcode 4 for a lone developer?.

I suggest some reading on git for the beginning:

• Git in five minutes
• Git Community Book
• The Thing About Git