The Jujutsu version control system

#1

Post by imajoredinecon » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

The Jujutsu version control system
neugierig.org

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#2

Post by forrestthewoods » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:20 PM UTC

I’m quite happy with Sapling at work. I still haven’t figured out what Jujutsu does better. I think nothing substantial? Not that Sapling can be easily used in the public sphere. But at a conceptual level I’m not sure there’s anything in JJ I’m missing.

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#3

Post by gcr » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:21 PM UTC

I use jj for all my projects on github! It's really useful for my sort of workflow: chains of commits with easily-editable history. If you make a change back in time, you edit the previous commit (which puts you in a state similar to git's detached head), and any edits you make there are automatically carried forward (rebased) onto descendants. It feels way more natural, especially for newer users.

The killer feature that I love the most is a small one, but it's that commit messages can be made ahead of time rather than after-the-fact. So I can sit down at my desk, say

    jj new -m "Work on XYZ feature"

then edit my code in the editor. When I'm finished, I move on to the next commit:

    jj new -m "Working on UVW feature"

No more "oh no I accidentally started touching code and forgot to commit my work, so now I have to manually split two git commits;" it's a small way that the tooling encourages you to be intentional about your engineering philosophy.

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#4

Post by akdor1154 » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:24 PM UTC

Great article. How do people deal with the lack of branches, esp in a full time setting where it's common to have a few independent features on the go?

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#5

Post by bsder » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:32 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #2

I’m quite happy with Sapling at work. I still haven’t figured out what Jujutsu does better. I think nothing substantial? Not that Sapling can be easily used in the public sphere. But at a conceptual level I’m not sure there’s anything in JJ I’m missing.

Sapling is Mercurial with some advancements. Mercurial is ridiculously better than git, but lost the network effects battle due to Github. So, JJ probably doesn't give you anything amazing.

JJ is useful for those of us who understand the shittiness of Git but have to work in a world that got locked into path dependent network effects by VC money.

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#6

Post by thibran » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:33 PM UTC

How do the rebased commits work when working with others together on a branch?

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#7

Post by frizlab » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:46 PM UTC

gcr wrote: post #3

I use jj for all my projects on github! It's really useful for my sort of workflow: chains of commits with easily-editable history. If you make a change back in time, you edit the previous commit (which puts you in a state similar to git's detached head), and any edits you make there are automatically carried forward (rebased) onto descendants. It feels way more natural, especially for newer users. The killer feature…

This might be the single most compelling reason I’ve ever read to try jj. I won’t, but thanks for this particular feedback.

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#8

Post by ghfhghg » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:48 PM UTC

gcr wrote: post #3

I use jj for all my projects on github! It's really useful for my sort of workflow: chains of commits with easily-editable history. If you make a change back in time, you edit the previous commit (which puts you in a state similar to git's detached head), and any edits you make there are automatically carried forward (rebased) onto descendants. It feels way more natural, especially for newer users. The killer feature…

Sounds kind of like perforce

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#9

Post by setheron » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:50 PM UTC

The jj community on discord has been great also. It took a while for it to sync in but when I use git now it feels "wrong"

Re: The Jujutsu version control system

#10

Post by sunshowers » Sun, Dec 22, 2024, 8:55 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #2

I’m quite happy with Sapling at work. I still haven’t figured out what Jujutsu does better. I think nothing substantial? Not that Sapling can be easily used in the public sphere. But at a conceptual level I’m not sure there’s anything in JJ I’m missing.

Sapling is great. I worked on it for many years at Facebook and I think we did a pretty good job building a workflow that most developers preferred to Git.

To the extent that Jujutsu is similar to any other systems, it is most similar to Sapling — both have a Mercurial heritage (Sapling is derived from hg, while Jujutsu is a new codebase with an hg-inspired UX). However, Jujutsu introduces a number of fantastic improvements over Sapling, such as first-class merge conflicts and automatic working copy snapshots. See my testimonial, the top one on this page:

https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/testimonials/#what-the-us...

I no longer do VCS development, but I'm a very happy full-time jj user. I've also helped onboard a number of people onto it.

(Personally, I'm just happy that after the dark era of Git's branch-first UX being dominant, the anonymous heads/commit-first UX pioneered by Mercurial is making a resurgence. The vast majority of developers prefer a commit-first UX, and it is so much easier to explain things like stacked commits if you don't have to introduce git rebase -i.)