Products · Product
Mercurial
Raised as a usability problem by 123 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 97 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
Every issue, all time, most people first
Separate branches and bookmarks concepts are extremely confusingUnreviewed
20082026- Bookmarks feel oddly contorted and the commander can't easily get impermanent branches2026-05-18
- Named branches and bookmarks are hard to use; the basic workflow relies on separate clones2023-11-21
- Hard to understand when to use branches versus bookmarks2023-11-06
Overlapping history-rewriting methods make it hard for novices to chooseUnreviewed
20082026- Couldn't easily rewrite history; amend and rebase needed awkward extensions2026-05-17
- Rewritten history can't be force pushed, forcing teams into workarounds and processes2022-07-23
- Multiple overlapping history-rewriting methods make it hard for novices to pick one2021-04-28
Unwanted branches are hard to remove and persist in historyUnreviewed
20082026- Accidentally creates multiple heads for a branch and is hard to undo2023-11-06
- Overloaded 'branch' concept is annoying; topic branches persist unwantedly2018-09-20
- Hard to figure out how to delete a branch in its interface2017-03-30
Branches are hard to name and cannot be diffed easilyUnreviewed
20082026- Named branches baked in make workflow feel like swimming against the current2023-09-15
- Warns about named branches but gives no way to undo the mistake2016-05-11
- Accidentally pulls patches from conflicting named branches, e.g. generic 'bugfix' names2013-04-08
Bookmarks get into a bad state with no clear fixUnreviewed
20082026- Bookmarks can't be deleted and are hard to share with others2021-11-06
- Bookmarks and shelve features did not seem to work properly2019-08-20
- Bookmarks get into a bad state and the user can't work out how to fix them2019-01-26
No index, so exactly what to commit can't be reviewedUnreviewed
20082026- Amending with hg amend -i requires mental overhead to avoid modifying unintended commits2021-04-28
- Without an index, can't closely review exactly what to commit, forcing every change into a commit2018-04-11
- Without a staging index, changes are committed directly, which is hard to use for people coming from git2016-09-09
hg log and show commands are harder to remember than git'sUnreviewed
20082026- Hg log lists every commit and its dense output is hard to read2020-01-07
- Irregular users struggle with confusing hg commands, like needing -f for log and finding current head2019-08-23
- Hg log and show commands are harder to remember and type than git's2014-02-16
Needs extensions enabled to do what git does by defaultUnreviewed
20082026- Stashing changes needs extension installation and config, unlike git's simple command2020-12-19
- Needs extensions enabled to do what git does out of the box2014-03-12
- Common workflows need extra extensions installed, unlike git which supports them by default2013-11-18
Advanced branching and merging workflows become extremely painfulUnreviewed
20082026- Advanced branching and merging workflows become extremely painful or impossible to do2024-01-01
- Too many overlapping branch-like features make it unclear which workflow to use2020-08-27
- Branching workflow is confusing, requiring pristine clones to branch safely2010-10-09
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Slow to use, making everyday interaction painful2026-05-18
- Bookmarks feel oddly contorted and the commander can't easily get impermanent branches2026-05-18
- UX diverges from git in ways that are arguably worse2026-05-17
- Handling short-lived branches was painful, so the user switched to Git2026-05-17
- Pushes users to merge and push work in progress they didn't want to publish2026-05-17
- Commenter says Mercurial has a worse UI than nearly any other version control system2026-05-17
- Couldn't easily rewrite history; amend and rebase needed awkward extensions2026-05-17
- Hard to manage many branches within one working directory2026-04-22
- Mercurial is frustratingly slow and has bad user experience2025-10-31
- Felt alien to use, with support hard to find since few people use it2025-08-05
- Running commit after creating a file silently commits nothing with no clue how to proceed2025-05-13
- Defaults don't guide users to the workflow they want; staging needs a hunt for an extension2025-04-08
- Harder to understand and slower to use, and rigid when workflows don't match2025-04-08
- Found how Mercurial handles branches extremely confusing2025-04-08
- After pulling, you land on an unnamed branch and can't tell where you are2024-09-10
- Commenter found Mercurial confusing about how branches work, though can't recall specifics2024-09-09
- Mercurial felt painfully slow and its concepts were odd to work with2024-07-16
- Getting graph changes done requires enabling and configuring extensions, with no simple path2024-07-16
- Had serious UX problems that made it hard to adopt compared to Git2024-07-15
- Mercurial's branch types are confusing, and its website hides bookmarks, the closest git-branch equivalent2024-07-15
- Commands take hundreds of milliseconds, making the CLI feel sluggish2024-03-08
- Advanced branching and merging workflows become extremely painful or impossible to do2024-01-01
- Found Mercurial extremely confusing to use compared with Git2023-12-11
- Commands are built around internals, not the user's goals, making workflows hard to follow2023-11-22
- Lacks undo safety; overwriting patches risks losing work, and second-order diffs are hard to inspect2023-11-22
- Named branches and bookmarks are hard to use; the basic workflow relies on separate clones2023-11-21
- Mercurial's labelled graph (heads, branches, tip, merges) is mentally overloading and hard to follow2023-11-07
- Spends disproportionate time avoiding losing work during checkout and version control operations2023-11-06
- Commenter couldn't figure out how to clean up mistakes; rebasing needed an external plugin2023-11-06
- Accidentally creates multiple heads for a branch and is hard to undo2023-11-06
- Hard to understand when to use branches versus bookmarks2023-11-06
- No reflogs or rebase makes local branching harder to use than in Git2023-10-08
- Anonymous branches, multiple repos and bookmarks interact confusingly2023-10-08
- Named branches baked in make workflow feel like swimming against the current2023-09-15
- Found Mercurial confusing a decade ago, though the exact reason is forgotten2023-08-12
- Slow for common operations and repository corruption problems2023-08-08
- Searching the codebase with hg grep takes over a minute2023-08-08
- Checking out an old revision not previously downloaded is very slow2023-06-29
- Basic features are hidden in optional modules, confusing beginners2023-01-20
- Commander finds Mercurial's user experience terrible and could never get the hang of it2022-11-16
- Rewritten history can't be force pushed, forcing teams into workarounds and processes2022-07-23
- Running Mercurial is very slow because it's written in Python2022-04-25
- Commenter finds the tool very difficult to use2022-02-19
- Bookmarks can't be deleted and are hard to share with others2021-11-06
- Felt very confusing and limited to a user coming from git2021-11-06
- Mercurial queues feel non-ergonomic and the user can't work out how to stage commits with them2021-07-03
- Mercurial is awfully slow on medium to large projects2021-06-22
- Keeps having to search for which command does a given task2021-06-21
- Largefiles modifies commit structure, causing problems with tooling and forcing users to disable it2021-05-13
- Amending with hg amend -i requires mental overhead to avoid modifying unintended commits2021-04-28