Git vs. Mercurial

Personally I'm more a fan of Git with the main reason being: Branching.

As far as I know Git still has problems handling Windows which is something Mercurial has never had to worry about. But since i am not a windows user (lover, or any other positive opinion holder), i don't really care.


Git

Pros
Lots of features
More hosting options.
Faster - slightly.
GitHub.
Solid local branch support.

Cons
Poor Windows support
Rubbish logo
Silly, long SHA1 hash of revisions.
You need to keep 'packing' the repo
History fiddling.


Mercurial

Pros
Portable
Its built with Python
Easily extensible using Python
Cool logo
Better documentation.
Local integer revision numbers on top of the SHA1
No need to keep packing/optimising.
Smaller repo footprint.
Better patch support (bundles and such)
Easy to learn.

Cons
Smaller feature set.
Few 3rd party hosting options.
Fewer 3rd party apps and plugins.
Smaller community.
Slower development.


Who Uses What

Mercurial
Mozilla
OpenSolaris
Aptitude
Netbeans
Dovecot

Git
Ruby on Rails Core
Linux Kernel
Google Android
Beryl
Fedora


Who Needs What
Mercurial is great for people who want to dive into distributed version control and get busy. Its clean, fast and easy to learn.

Git is for those who wish to fully exercise the benefits of source control and avoid the down's often happen when collaborating code.