In what might be his last Joel on Software post (for awhile, at least) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/03/17.html Summary: Early 2009: Joel disses DVCSes. His programmers switch from subversion to hg. Joel grumbles. His programmers develop an hg-related product. Joel takes a better look. Joel sees the light: Subversion controls versions, hg controls changes; this make merging much easier. Joel flips (his opinion): Switch now! Joel write hg tutorial: http://hginit.com/ It starts with "Subversion Re-education" for existing version-oriented system users and continue with "Ground up Mercurial" where new vcs users can start. It has several simple examples. Having gotten that far, I think this might be worth referencing in new dev docs. Terry Jan Reedy