Having used few “lesser” VCSes I am not so sure I’d call Git elegant. It just became famous and defacto VCS of the Internet - a lot of that credit must go to Github (which also was and is used a lot by comps and teams). Something like Markdown — one day everyone and their kittens were just using it which is not necessarily not a compliment.
I had created 2-3 char git submodule related aliases. Git submodule exists because a better alternative isn’t available (which gives us same behaviour or close to it).
As a side note: git won because at the time all other VCSes were either functionally worse (lice RCS or Subversion), or were good but required a paid license (like Perforce or BitKeeper), or were too slow to for larger projects like Linux (Mercurial).
More advanced things were created since then, like Fossil or Pijul. But the network effects make git predominant now.
> But the network effects make git predominant now.
That and the fact that it's... well, it's a good system - if perhaps not with the best UX.
It works well for pretty much everyone who cares to learn the basics, and then you can evolve from there with more practice. Which is probably true of any system.
Indeed, git is pretty good internally, despite the clunkiness of the CLI.
But, say, Mercurial is also pretty good in many aspects. It used to be rather popular, but its popularity is waning, and not because of some kind of technical inferiority.
> or were too slow to for larger projects like Linux (Mercurial).
So it seems like there were technical reasons for Git vs. Mercurial. I don't really know and having never used Mercurial, I couldn't comment on how good it is or how it compares with Git.
From what I read around, it's mostly the UX that's marginally better on the Mercurial side. This is the point where the network effect certainly has weight. If one offering is not better enough than the one people are used to, there is no compelling reason to learn something anew and move all existing projects over.
When there is great technical reason, people will move though and the network effect will start moving across. See the previous systems that were popular before Git: Subversion, CVS, ClearCase, etc. Those have mostly been phased out completely, except maybe for older projects that have them ingrained into their processes and technology.
I've been on a number of projects which used git without GitHub. But of course GitHub like "the default" repository of open-source projects has done a lot to make git the default VCS.
There's no wonder GitHub drew people in. It's interface and ease of building a community around a repo made of so much more accessible than anything else around at the time.
I had created 2-3 char git submodule related aliases. Git submodule exists because a better alternative isn’t available (which gives us same behaviour or close to it).