Before git, most people in my larger circle used RCS, a UNIX version control system from the early 80's. It was very limited (basically each file had its own side-file that contained revision data, and there was no project-wide file) but did its job. Many people moved over to VCS, which used RCS files but added project-wide files so you could manage a dir tree.
After that, I think many people moved to subversion, which had a lot more functionality for distributed VC, for exmaple there was a server. svn was popular for a while but building it was painful (due to berkeley db) and it sort of never grew. I invested a lot of time in (specifically apache with mod_dav and mod_dav_svn) but lost interest in VC after fighting with subversion.
git came along and from what i can tell it mainly had "it's by linus, and the kernel uses it" and "it's fast" and "something about reflogs". I use git day-to-day but I still; can't explain how git became so ubiquitous; I find using it outright painful.
After that, I think many people moved to subversion, which had a lot more functionality for distributed VC, for exmaple there was a server. svn was popular for a while but building it was painful (due to berkeley db) and it sort of never grew. I invested a lot of time in (specifically apache with mod_dav and mod_dav_svn) but lost interest in VC after fighting with subversion.
git came along and from what i can tell it mainly had "it's by linus, and the kernel uses it" and "it's fast" and "something about reflogs". I use git day-to-day but I still; can't explain how git became so ubiquitous; I find using it outright painful.