I tell you… what a hard decision to make! I cannot decide which tool is better for my DVCS needs. Clearly the toolset is deeper if I go with GitHub. Not only does GH have lots of tools but there are plenty of 3rd party tools too. Some of the slicker GUIs include Tower for OSX. On the downside; if you have to install the CLI client it can get squirrely because there are a few different languages in the dependency tree although I’ve never actually had a problem deploying it.
On the other hand, the pricing for BitBucket is better when you consider my shop. I’m “mostly” a sole contributor for my company and having an unlimited number of private and public repositories is reasonable and cost effective. The other thing I really like is that the CLI is written in python and mostly python. I think there is some native C code that compiles but I cannot be sure. I know that it installs in a ver stable fashion.
As for which has better. I’m not certain. I know that they are both quality applications. The companies behind them are strong. Both are widely used. Both are integrated into the GO tools which I really like. Some people talk about branching and merging and the differences there. I’m not sure I care. I’ve rarely had to branch/merge.
One last note. GitHub has added some sort of subversion(SVN) framework to their platform and BitBucker has added a GitHub framework. I’m not sure if this is an alias type of thing or if it is a real deployment.
Sorry I cannot offer any solutions. I use them all and I’m still trying to reduce my footprint.
PS: an interesting thing I just noticed. The initials for GitHub are GH and the shortcut for BitBucket -> mercurial is HG. HG <=> GH ?? Fun!
PS: two additional mentions. MacHG is a good OSX GUI for HG. SourceTree works on both HG and GH.
