git-stack VS git-branchless

git-stack is the most complicated, rewriting history, detecting when a branch was squashed, etc

I used to use aliases but got frustrated with them when dealing with PRs depending on PRs, so I wrote git-stack [0]. Thought I'd share in case you'd find it useful

[0] https://github.com/epage/git-stack/blob/main/docs/reference....

For anyone interested, I've been collecting notes on various tools in this space: https://github.com/epage/git-stack/blob/main/docs/comparison... (granted the page doesn't mention git-stack since that is assumed)

Personally, I rebase my PR branches on top of each other, rather than merge. It creates a cleaner history (if your merge policy allows maintaining branch history). Tired of managing these branches, I wrote a tool to help though there are other tools in this space, like git-branchless and graphite.

git-move and git-branchless do some great stuff, I wish this wasn't focused on the performance side to distract from the real value.

What I find useful is not the performance but this line

> For example, it can move entire subtrees, not just branches

The referenced docs mention other great quality of life improvements that streamline standard workflows (e.g. deleting local PR branches when merged into upstream)

When performance does matter is when the rebase operation is a small part of a larger operation. In my related tool, git-stack [0], I rebase all branches on top of their latest upstream branches along with re-arranging and squashing fixup commits and soon other features. When automating entire workflows, having each part be fast is important for the whole to still have decent performance.

[0] https://github.com/epage/git-stack

audit for security audits - Separate from regular CI since it only matters for specific changes or when new critical issues come out.

You might be interested in git-stack that I've previously announced

Could you comment on https://github.com/epage/git-stack/issues/25 for why it helps to iterate to find the last non-conflicting commit to rebase onto?

git-stack is the result of me being tired of annoyances in the PR workflow and trying to improve it, like

Fixing branches off of branches when applying a fixup commit (not implemented yet)

You can run the tests on each commit in parallel if you're okay with wasting CPU time to save wall-clock time. git-branchless can speculatively run linear or binary search in parallel up to a user-specified number of jobs [1], and I'd like it add it to jj someday, as it's one of the features I miss most.

(To run the tests in parallel, git-branchless provisions its own worktrees. For binary search, it speculatively executes the search for the potential success and failure cases; when the number of jobs is a power of 2, this partitions the search space evenly.)

[1]: https://github.com/arxanas/git-branchless/wiki/Command:-git-...

When I was doing more hardcore dev instead of SRE'ing I settled on git branchless, was well worth the experimenting you have to do to get it into your mental model.

now that I hardly ever have 2 layer deep stacks I just settle on my go-to git client which is magit. It just takes a couple of keystrokes to do a couple of stacked rebases.

[1]: https://github.com/arxanas/git-branchless

Yes, but due to its simplicity + extensibility + widespread adoption, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re still using Git 100+ years from now.

The current trend (most popular and IMO likely to succeed) is to make tools (“layers”) which work on top of Git, like more intuitive UI/patterns (https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit, https://github.com/arxanas/git-branchless) and smart merge resolvers (https://github.com/Symbolk/IntelliMerge, https://docs.plasticscm.com/semanticmerge/how-to-configure/s...). Git it so flexible, even things that it handles terribly by default, it handles

> Is this for a case where a bunch of people branch from master@HEAD (lets call this A), then you need to modify A, so you then need to rebase each branch that branched from A individually?

Mainly it's for when you branch from A multiple times, and then modify A. This can happen if you have some base work that you build multiple features on top of. I routinely do this as part of rapid prototyping, as described here: https://github.com/arxanas/git-branchless/wiki/Workflow:-div...

`git undo` shows a list of operations it'll execute, which you have to confirm before accepting. Of course, it's ultimately a matter of trust in the tools you use.