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We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

blog.gitbutler.com

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Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#631

Post by 1718627440 »

red_admiral wrote: post #250
bee_rider wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like git, it works perfectly fine on my command line. I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. Pull requests aren’t even a concept in git proper, right? It seems like a kind of important type of tool. Even though git is awesome, we don’t need a monoculture.

Indeed they're not; they live on the 'user layer' rather than the 'application layer'. That's not to say many git-frontends (IntelliJ, Sourcetree, Github desktop) don't support them, but "git pullrequest" isn't a thing. Edit: see "git request-pull" as mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html) but what it does is write "a pretty email" (the other poster's words) t…

> mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html)

What? Is the intention, that I access your C: drive? Also is it common to have a file:// link on MS Windows? I thought this was a unix thing.

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#632

Post by wraptile »

nine_k wrote: post #578

The tool that could replace git must free, ubiquitous, and arguably open-source. This is why I cannot imagine how raising $17M may pay for itself in that case, to say nothing of a 10× return. It may be a great tool, but I'd be very reluctant to use a closed-source solution as a cornerstone of infrastructure.

I mean it worked out for Astral who made open python tooling and got acquired by openai¹ maybe it's a new legit strategy now

1 - https://openai.com/index/openai-to-acquire-astral/

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#633

Post by bogwog »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #579
Vampyre wrote: post #563

- leads with amount of money raised - mentions a16z - i use git every single day and have no idea what exactly the thing will do they aren't building something to help you, they're building something to trap you. even if it's free, does things you like, etc., do not use it. their end goal is to screw you

Seeing all of these investments in developer tooling projects makes me wonder/skeptical of what the next chapter of development looks like when the money spigot runs dry. I've not used this app, but I wonder how tooling like this truly competes against an open source community armed with AI. Like where is the moat here, really? I built a personal tool that does some of this with a basic Claude subscription over the c…

> Feels like vibe-coders are the real target market for something like this,

I think this is a potentially giant market: incurious people who don't know what they're doing, lack experience and wisdom, and are highly susceptible to empty marketing fluff. Selling junk to these people can't be very difficult, especially if they rely on an LLM (funded by many of the same investors) to explain it to them.

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#634

Post by chadrs »

wraptile wrote: post #632
nine_k wrote: post #578

The tool that could replace git must free, ubiquitous, and arguably open-source. This is why I cannot imagine how raising $17M may pay for itself in that case, to say nothing of a 10× return. It may be a great tool, but I'd be very reluctant to use a closed-source solution as a cornerstone of infrastructure.

I mean it worked out for Astral who made open python tooling and got acquired by openai¹ maybe it's a new legit strategy now 1 - https://openai.com/index/openai-to-acquire-astral/

surely you've witnessed the backlash to uv as a result though

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#635

Post by convolvatron »

trashb wrote: post #533

> The old model assumed one person, one branch, one terminal, one linear flow. Not only has the problem not been solved well for that old model, it’s now only been compounded with our new AI tools. A bit of a strange thing to say in my book. Git isn't SVN and I think these problems are already solved with git. I agree that the interface is not always very intuitive but Git has the infrastructure which is very much fo…

I've always wanted a kind of broader and more integrated approach that isn't just about text diffs. the ability to link in substantial comments that would be displayed optionally and not piss off linear readers. links to design and reference documents. bugs and prs that were persistent and linked to the versioned code instead of being ephemeral.

think about all of the discussion we have around the code that gets lost. we certainly have the ability to keep and link all that stuff now. we don't really need to have arguments about squashing or not, we can just keep the fine grained commits if you really want to dig into them and maybe ask that people write a comprehensive summary of the changes in a patch set -in addition-.

but I guess none of that has anythig to do with AI

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#636

Post by lamasery »

farouqjalabi wrote: post #583
PunchyHamster wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sooooo git worktree. It's exactly that. One repository dir checked out in different places with different branches.

Not quite, Gitbutler allows you to apply multiple branches to the code base at once. With codebases you will have multiple code bases not one. for example: It allows me to test coworkers branches with mine without merging or creating new branch. It has many features that makes it super easy to add patch to any commit in any branch

Seconding others here, what you're bringing up as distinct features of Gitbutler seems to just be stuff git can do.

- One local copy of a repo with multiple work trees checked out at once, on different branches/commits? Git does that.

- "Add a patch to any commit in any branch" I can't think of a way of interpreting this statement (and I can think of a couple!) that isn't something git can do directly.

Maybe it adds some new UI to these, but those are just git features. Doesn't mean it's a bad product (I have no idea, and "just UI" can be a good product) but these seem to be built-in git features, not Gitbutler features.

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#637

Post by lamasery »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #9
MBCook wrote: post #6

Why does it take $17m to beat Git? How will you ever get the network effects needed to get sustained users with a commercial tool? Given Git was created because BitKeeper, a commercial tool, pulled their permission for kernel developers to use their tool aren’t we ignoring a lesson there?

Apparently it takes $17M and a whole team full of people to do what one guy with a chip on his shoulder could do for free.

I'd be 1,000x more interested in a project with the official git maintainers' buy-in to leverage the alleged power of LLM development to bring all git's features into libgit2 (or whatever, but that's a starting point) and switch git itself over to using that as its backend.

I've twice in my career found reasons that git being (officially; I have no interest in dealing with another implementation with its own missing features and distinct bugs) a library instead of a messy ball of scripts and disparate binaries, would have saved me tons and tons of time. You can look at the stories of how Github was designed and built, or look at the architectures of other similar software, and see folks struggling with the same issue. You'll run into frustration on this front pretty much instantly if you try to build tooling around Git, which turns out to be such a useful thing to do that I've ended up doing it twice in ~15 years without particularly looking for reasons to.

(While we're at it, how about some kind of an officially-blessed lib-rsync with a really pleasant API?)

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#638

Post by Meleagris »

prepend wrote: post #569
Meleagris wrote: post #17

I recently switched to Jujutsu (jj) and it made me realize that “what comes after Git” might already exist. It turns out the snapshot model is a perfect fit for AI-assisted development. I can iterate freely without thinking about commits or worrying about saving known-good versions. You can just mess around and make it presentable later, which Git never really let you do nicely. Plus there’s essentially zero learning…

Do you not use git branches? Your use case was why git was made.

I do use git branches, but they solve isolation, which isn't my pain point with git.

When I'm using agents to code, I don't want to have to stop what I'm doing and commit known-good state to the repo every few minutes.

jj just snapshots everything automatically, so I know I've captured that state, and I can look back and curate it all after the fact.

It's like the shift from manually saving Word documents to autosave, but instead of forcing it with git, I can use JJ which has been intentionally designed for that workflow.

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#639

Post by anentropic »

yard2010 wrote: post #607
factorialboy wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I did was install GitButler via my OS's package manager, and open a local repo via the GUI. And I saw these malicious (pre-commit) git hooks installed by GitButler, without any confirmation, or prompt seeking my approval. I'm sure you folks will come up with a "technical explanation" or some "legal-marketing language" to cover up for this — but in my book — redirect `git commit` to `but commit` is dishonest and u…

You keep using the word malicious, what do you mean? What is the malice?

Yeah it feels malicious if it doesn't tell you it's going to do that, like a sneaky lock-in

Re: We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git

#640

Post by atq2119 »

jitl wrote: post #591
Vampyre wrote: post #563

- leads with amount of money raised - mentions a16z - i use git every single day and have no idea what exactly the thing will do they aren't building something to help you, they're building something to trap you. even if it's free, does things you like, etc., do not use it. their end goal is to screw you

if the cli is open sources and ends up finished i don't see what the problem is to let a vc fund them building it

The problem is in your premise: Software usually does not end up finished.
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