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Software Engineering

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    Not that I think you should choose a DVCS based on popularity. Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 2:59
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    Actually, I think popularity is an excellent reason to choose a version control system because of the distributed nature of the tool. The network externality effects give the more popular tool vastly more value if you plan to contribute to projects with other participants. Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 8:52
  • I agree for open source projects. If you want to have your primary DVCS known to the greatest number of potential contributors, Git is the de facto choice. Internal to an organization... you need to go with factors such as the size of your team, institutional support, etc. Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 19:45
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    As I suggested here: "You should use git when a project or community you want to contribute to uses git, and use Mercurial when they use Mercurial. It may seem obvious, but the community is more important than the tool." Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 12:58
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    It's not all technical - consider that a business needs to recruit new programmers to the team to support growth and replacement. Choosing tools (DVCS is just one of many) that are well known means that a new recruit is more likely to be familiar with it. Also a more popular tool (Particularly OSS) will likely get more resources and effort and over time improve faster. Commented Jun 26, 2012 at 21:51