Why hackers moved from CVS to Git

1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.

CVS 2 hackers criticize it
→
Git 6 hackers recommend it

What hackers said about the move

“We switched from CVS to git, and were evaluating multiple choices.”
pitkali, 2026-05-18original comment ↗

Use CVS? Get alerted when hackers criticize it.

Tell us the tools in your stack. When hackers start criticizing one of them, or moving to an alternative, you will hear about it first.

CVS vs Git

CVSGit
Hackers who recommend06
Hackers who criticize24
Moved away from it32
Moved to it02

Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.

Criticism of CVS

“When we switched from CVS to SVN I had to show ROI”
bandrami, 2026-06-18original comment ↗

Praise for Git

“Instead of using an elegant mechanism, project have built inelegant wrappers on top of git like go.mod which are actual mistakes.”
purpleidea, 2026-10-01original comment ↗
“But then we moved to git and only stuff that had a designated owner got moved from cvs/svn to git”
Macha, 2026-09-29original comment ↗
“Git hardly ever gets in my way, I have never had to do complex octopus merges or anything like that.”
umvi, 2026-09-01original comment ↗
“It then fails if you try to overwrite commits that you haven't seen, and has saved me a few times when working between computers on the same project”
acallaghan, 2026-06-01original comment ↗
“with git + RFC3161 attestation of commits, I can prove I made additions when I said I made them”
epistasis, 2026-04-25original comment ↗

Other moves from CVS

Other moves to Git