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Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

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Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#71

Post by justinpombrio »

y1n0 wrote: post #65
jolux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean named branches (bookmarks in jj)? Because anonymous branches in jj are trivial: you just `jj new ` and you have a new branch. Bookmarks aren’t that bad either IMO, especially with the recent addition of `jj bookmark advance`. Curious if you can say more about the particular difficulties you found keeping them up to date?

I think I said named branches, but that is definitely what I mean. I find it strange that people want to work on anonymous branches, but to each their own. I don't so that has no appeal to me. I often work on something and then switch away to something else. it might be a week before i get back to it, and the name of the branch is a clue as to what the heck I was doing. Other people often need to check out a branch I…

> it might be a week before i get back to it, and the name of the branch is a clue as to what the heck I was doing.

Ah, this is what the description (what git would call the commit message) is for. You can set the description even before you've made any changes.

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#72

Post by hu3 »

fragmede wrote: post #26

The elephant in the room is that I haven't had to do something complicated and manual in git by hand in a long while. I'm using AI to generate code, and further, having it commit to git and pushing and pulling and managing branches and merging for me. So for people new to software development, they can also just ask AI to deal with git, which papers over the harder parts of its UX.

This. I feel jj is some years too late.

It tries to solve a human problem in an LLM era.

LLMs are destined to overcome humans in code merging and change versioning (already did for me).

There's little point to introducing yet another layer of indirection when LLMs just cut to the chase.

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#73

Post by y1n0 »

kccqzy wrote: post #63
y1n0 wrote: post #2

I don't get why people like jujutsu. I tried it for a while but I work with a quite a few people in the same repo and I need easy named branches that keep up with commits. For all the many problems in git, branches are dead easy. That was the big innovation over svn at the time. Last time I tried jj, branches were an extremely laborious process to keep up to date. I don't see how people that aren't working alone can…

You don’t need easy named branches. Naming branches is a chore: since you already spend time writing commit messages, branch names are just a summarization of your commit messages but with more character restrictions. That’s why I always use jj’s automatic commit identifiers. They are short and I don’t waste brain cycles naming things that are ephemeral. When I push, I let jj automatically creates, updates, and delet…

Yeah, I don't get it. I'm sure it's because we work differently and that's fine.

But when I'm picking up something someone on the team has left behind because they got pulled on to something else, or are sick, or 5 million other reasons, having a branch, with a ticket in the name, explaining what the purpose of the branch is, why it exists, what it's current state is, that all matters. I can't help but think that everyone that likes JJ isn't really doing collaboration.

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#75

Post by RobotCaleb »

y1n0 wrote: post #70
LoganDark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't try to reimplement the git workflow on top of Jujutsu. I like it because I can let go of a bunch of annoying noise that I needed in Git. I like it because rebases don't have to be synchronous and modal. I like it because I can easily edit history, rearrange the commit graph, change commit descriptions, duplicate, and so much more, and even remotely (without having to checkout first). There's so much to love t…

That's great that it has things you like. I don't do rebasing, except on MRs where I've come to prefer squashing the branch being committed. But I don't rewrite history. It's history. While I can understand people have reasons to do it, the reasons have never resonated with me. I'd rather spend my time getting new work done and not polishing work I've already done.

I'm excited for your delayed comment. I'm sure going to take note that you delayed it and come back later to read it because I'm super interested in what it is that you've delayed. You know, you can just write the comment instead of holding your place in line

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#76

Post by jolux »

y1n0 wrote: post #65
jolux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean named branches (bookmarks in jj)? Because anonymous branches in jj are trivial: you just `jj new ` and you have a new branch. Bookmarks aren’t that bad either IMO, especially with the recent addition of `jj bookmark advance`. Curious if you can say more about the particular difficulties you found keeping them up to date?

I think I said named branches, but that is definitely what I mean. I find it strange that people want to work on anonymous branches, but to each their own. I don't so that has no appeal to me. I often work on something and then switch away to something else. it might be a week before i get back to it, and the name of the branch is a clue as to what the heck I was doing. Other people often need to check out a branch I…

> I think I said named branches, but that is definitely what I mean

I think I misread you, because you were talking about git vs svn in a way that made it sound like jj was a step backward from git as regards branching, and I got confused.

> I often work on something and then switch away to something else. it might be a week before i get back to it, and the name of the branch is a clue as to what the heck I was doing.

Right, but you can still name your branches with bookmarks, you’re just not required to. Personally, I tend to use commit descriptions more than bookmarks to keep track of what I’m working on, but this is a personal choice.

> Other people often need to check out a branch I'm working on to help. How does anonymous branching help anyone except a solo developer?

It’s just nicer as a local workflow, to me at least? I can create throwaway branches without having to come up with a name for them. I end up creating many, many more branches than I did in git as a result, which helps me keep my work better organized and my changes more focused when I submit them for others to review (which at least on GitHub, requires a bookmark of course). This is ultimately psychological because obviously I could just make up a name for the git branch, right? But it makes a big difference for me!

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#77

Post by 789-ha »

ninkendo wrote: post #60
jadar wrote: post #58

I tend to just commit whenever I see fit, then at the end I do a `git reset —soft` and write the history that makes sense before pushing.

I always tell people I use a “git reset” based workflow. I rarely “checkout” branches, I just stay on main, reset hard when switching topics, reset soft when squashing, and I only name my branches on the remote end via “git push origin HEAD:some-branch”. `git branch` is basically my bookmark tool. I commit for a while, then when I want to remember where I am for later, `git branch wip/topic-a-finally-compiles` or wha…

I can’t tell if this is satire. The fact that we have to memorize soft and hard resets was a thing I and everyone else just have to do. But that goes away if you only have commits, so no staging area vs staged changes vs changes on disk, it’s just all a commit and we have a myriad of tools that already know how to deal with commits. Honestly, your workflow as described sounds incredibly compatible with jujutsu, I’d really recommend giving it a shot / another go

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#78

Post by bsder »

incognito124 wrote: post #15
nomel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think jj will never gain momentum because people only have a git mental model at this point, so won't be able to effectively reason about jj.

I spoke about this before, but jj has the Blub Paradox problem, from the pg's essay Beating the Averages ( https://paulgraham.com/avg.html ). Yes, you can do most commit manipulations with git just like with jj. But, users of jj know they're "looking down the power continuum" (to reuse pg's terminology) when they look at git, whereas git users cannot fathom what's exactly the deal with jj. Unfortunately, the only way…

> I spoke about this before, but jj has the Blub Paradox problem

It's not relevant. Don't try to convert git users--you don't need to. They're fine doing what they do, and the git backend store is acceptable. People who understand how broken git is will gravitate to jj with the lightest of prodding--give them a light poke and then don't harass them further.

The main difference is that I can teach jj (like I could teach hg) to normal people. And, because jj is based on the git store, they can operate in a Github world.

So, just teach jj to people who haven't yet broken their brain with git. Running on the git backend already gains most of the network effect, so don't proselytize the git people.

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#79

Post by steveklabnik »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #64
stouset wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can literally jump into a commit and edit its contents directly, and everything is auto-rebased on top. There are no modal “sorry rebase failed, best of luck” gotchas. There are no “oops I put the wrong thing in the wrong part of the rebase and now I have to abort and start all over” gotchas. It’s rebase, but without all the extra work, mental overhead, failure cases, and effort.

How does it just auto-rebase everything without failing though? If you edit something later commits depend on, then you get merge conflicts. Are you implying that jj just automatically handles all this?

jj allows your commits to stay in a conflicted state until you choose to resolve them. I wrote about this a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767292

Re: Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu

#80

Post by paradox460 »

y1n0 wrote: post #66
stouset wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll be honest, as a long-time jj user, I actually haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about with branches being laborious to keep up to date. Can you elaborate?

I make a commit and the branch doesn't follow it. Bookmark, whatever. That is never a behavior I would want. What purpose does it serve?

They added auto advance bookmarks a while ago. You configure which revset bookmarks you want to advance or not, and then it just keeps them at the "head" of a branch
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