git-branchless VS sapling

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.

What happens is you work somewhere that has stacked diffs and suddenly you learn how to shape your diffs to make them easy to review. Thinking of how folks will review your code in chunks while writing it makes it cleaner. Having small but easy to read diffs makes reviews faster and helps junior devs learn how to review.

Sometimes this doesn’t happen in which case you end up need to split your commit at the end. This is where git utterly fails. You end up needing git split and git absorb to make this productive.

Git split let’s you select which chunks in a commit should belong to it and then splits that into a commit and then you do it again and again until you have lots of commits. You’ll still need to probably test each one but the majority of the work is done

Git absorb takes changes on the top of your stack and magically finds which commit in your stack the each chunk should belong to and amends it to the right commit

You also need git branchless https://github.com/arxanas/git-branchless as it lets you move up and down the stack without needing to remember so much git arcana.

I am personally surprised that TFA didn't mention either jj or Sapling [0] given its emphasis on how both Git and svn were both made to be backwards compatible!

[0] https://github.com/facebook/sapling

Lots to digest here! I have been keeping an eye on Pijul so it is cool to see some of its features implemented in jj. Sapling[0], similarly, is a new VCS tool out there which can work with a git repo. It also has anonymous branches, no staging area, supports stacked commits and can track the history of a commit over time. I've been using a similar workflow to the article's author: git with a UI to handle commits of hunks of a file to group related changes. My working branch often has unrelated changes that get tossed from branch to branch as I am able to commit. I haven't figured out where these new tools fit into my workflow yet, but I am glad there's new options that will help making working on a project more flexible and organized.

[0]: https://sapling-scm.com

yep both extended it and have versions that can work against GitHub/git servers.

sapling scm from meta has I think the best cli and VS code UX https://sapling-scm.com/

jj from google is also mercurial derived with very similar cli features like histedit and has support for deferring conflict resolution https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

As somebody who has actually been using Sapling (because it provides a much saner UI and mental model than git), the git compatibility of Sapling is at best so-so. It feels more like a stopgap solution while they're evolving their own backend (which I'm pretty sure they use internally, because git just doesn't scale to FB monorepo size and doesn't support their rebase-on-push operation). LFS flat-out doesn't work with Sapling. Force pushing after an amend or rebase is still cumbersome, because you need to explicitly specify (again) the branch you are pushing to. And I'm not sure how bad the file descriptor problem still is that you have (had?) with large repos or submodules [1]; there was a new release recently, but I haven't actually stress-tested that.

[1] At least some of that may be due to file descriptor leaks: https://github.com/facebook/sapling/issues/464