I'm sorry that I didn't make myself as clear as I would like to. I know nobody is bad-mouthing git, neither mercurial or bazaar. I only found that some arguments were not strong enough to be used as they were, and it wasn't a developer or moderator opinions. I found OGRE team and reputed members very clear and well informed on every issue they give their opinion and I listen carefully, because I usually wasn't aware of that pros, cons or issues on that topic.
When I said it was more or less a matter of taste is precisely because of your examination. Both systems scored the same. For me is exactly the same to use one or another (well, I know git and started to work a little with mercurial, but as I'm just checkouting it's not big deal). Your arguments that favour mercurial are cross-platform support and likeliness to svn and also that (I will say better because I can't find a best word for this) tools of git are for exceptional use while common use is mostly the same. For me it's fine, the important things to you are what matters, I'm only grateful for all your work.
The big problem of git I recognise without a doubt is cross-platform support. I don't know how big it is for normal operations so I won't go further. If it's too big it would have meant an immediate disqualification (I think).
On the ease of use and steep lerning curve, you can argue that even if mercurial is "similar" to svn, you should eventually have to learn to use mercurial features (you can't simply rely on svn, I think they can't be used completely equally but I could be wrong) so you will need to learn a new tool. If you have to learn a new tool, even if it's similar, you could also learn another not so similar tool, as you are putting some effort there it's not big deal (I didn't find git so different).
Also actually I think most svn users do the same I do, checkout and update. When the switch is over I will checkout, update and look at the log to see what's new. I won't even look at it deeply (unless I have a problem to report), just surface to know what's going on. If most users use svn for the same I do, and will use the DVCS as me, it's almost the same to use svn, mercurial or git, the commands are mostly the same ( svn update, git pull or fetch, hg pull hg update), and then (hg log, git log, svn log). So no difference for users like me.
The biggest difference is for developers. That's what I think should be the real disclaimer. I find mercurial's default public branches not the best for the kind of workflow I have in mind (which probably is the best to git, so probably is not the one you prefer), I've heard a few times that there's a mercurial extension for that default git behaviour (as for some others which aren't mercurial defaults but provided as official or not extensions). I like git's email patch system for sharing private work between developers not increasing with unfinished features the common official repository (which, if git with public branches, would need to have a branch for every feature developed and be pushed continuously so other interested developers could grab latest changes).
I think your tool should honour the best your workflow whichever it is and I think you already have that in mind so this was only to explain myself. I don't think there's anything new for those who will take the decision. That's why I think is a matter of taste now, your taste and priorities.
(obviously it's your decision, I won't post anything else and I didn't want to explain myself to this point because I find my opinion not so well informed and not so important as to be considered for such an important decision)
Sorry for the... brick? I don't know how to say very boring amount of repeatful speech in english, sorry
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