git-stack VS SemanticDiff

I'm not seeing a git compatibility layer? So I think it's a neat project, but I probably won't try it because nearly all code is rooted squarely in git. Even if Pijul is perfect, you'd need to convince everyone else to use it.

Nevertheless, the increased interest in moving to patch based workflows from branch based ones is great. There's a lot of similar tools here (https://github.com/gitext-rs/git-stack/blob/main/docs/compar...) which I refer to infrequently.

Personally my favorite tool for living-with-the-reality-that-is-branches is git-machete (https://github.com/VirtusLab/git-machete).

This is huge. I've wasted so much time on this, I wrote my own tool. No idea how thoroughly they've implemented this though (what all corner cases does it update or not)

> Probably some arcane git magic to (interactively) rebase branch

There is not really a command for that yet, short of adding a bunch of `exec` steps to your interactive rebase manually. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32217204 for an upcoming command.

You might enjoy using https://github.com/gitext-rs/git-stack, which specifically tries to let you manage stacked branches locally while not exposing tons of PRs to your coworkers.

git-branchless itself also lets you manage stacked branches in various ways. For example, you can do `git checkout `, `git commit --amend`, and then `git restack` to rebase all the descendant branches sensibly. You can use it on the local side of things only and then use Github PRs as normal.

I've been using termtree in my applications but I'm needing something more like git log --graph for git stack but haven't found a general purpose one (there is an implementation inside of git branchless) and haven't had a chance to make one myself.

Got a comparison of tools in this space at https://github.com/gitext-rs/git-stack/blob/main/docs/comparison.md

I try to keep the number of branches down but git-stack provides something like git log --graph that collapses branches from other users and old branches, keeping the main view clean.

Checkout https://github.com/gitext-rs/git-stack/blob/main/docs/compar... (note, the tool hosting this page is not included but as the author).

As the author of git stack, with all relevant biases, I recommend

- git stack for automating what you are already doing

- git branchless for more power at the risk of incombatibilities because its only as good as the data fed to git hooks

- jj if your open to something very different

Semantic Diff is probably the closest for now, although I don't think it uses tree-sitter.

https://semanticdiff.com/

Found via https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/issues/194.

I am working on SemanticDiff, a programming language aware diff that hides style-only changes, detects moved code and refactorings. I just added support for Rust and would like to know what you think!

If you're looking for a VS Code extension or a GitHub app, check out https://semanticdiff.com/. I'm a co-founder of this project.

If you prefer a CLI tool, check out https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic. It supports more languages, but doesn't recognize when code has been replaced by an equivalent version ("invariances"). So it will show some changes (e.g. replacing a character in a string with an escape sequence) even though they are technically equivalent.

There are some tools that can separate actual code changes from reformatting changes. I am working on https://semanticdiff.com, a VS Code Extension / GitHub App that can help you with this. There is also difftastic if you prefer a CLI based solution. It supports more languages but can detect fewer types of reformatting changes.

I'm not familiar with Pijul, and haven't finished watching this presentation, but IME the problems with modern version control tools is that they still rely on comparing lines of plain text, something we've been doing for decades. Merge conflicts are an issue because our tools are agnostic about the actual content they're tracking.

Instead, the tools should be smarter and work on the level of functions, classes, packages, sentences, paragraphs, or whatever primitive makes sense for the project and file that is being changed. In the case of code bases, they need to be aware of the language and the AST of the program. For binary files, they need to be aware of the file format and its binary structure. This would allow them to show actually meaningful diffs, and minimize the chances of conflicts, and of producing a corrupt file after an automatic merge.

There has been some research in this area, and there are a few semantic diffing tools[1,2,3], but I'm not aware of this being widely used in any VCS.

Nowadays, with all the machine learning advances, the ideal VCS should also use ML to understand the change at a deeper level, and maybe even suggest improvements. If AI can write code for me, it could surely understand what I'm trying to do, and help me so that version control is entirely hands-free, instead of having to fight with it, and be constantly aware of it, as I have to do now.

I just finished watching the presentation, and Pijul seems like an iterative improvement over Git. Nothing jumped out at me like a killer feature that would make me want to give it a try. It might be because the author focuses too much on technical details, instead of taking a step back and rethinking what a modern VCS tool should look like today.

[1]: https://semanticdiff.com/

[2]: https://github.com/trailofbits/graphtage

[3]: https://github.com/GumTreeDiff/gumtree

You mean copying chunks from one file/side to the other? If that is the case, you might want to subscribe to this issue that was opened a few days ago. Since the extension does not work on a line-by-line level, it is a bit more difficult than for normal diffs. For example, what should happen if the formatting differs between both files. Should SemanticDiff copy it over as well or try to merge the changes? I will try to post an update on/in this issue soon and maybe have a discussion about the expected behavior.

Feel free to open an issue at https://github.com/Sysmagine/SemanticDiff/issues so that we can keep you updated on the progress.

Feel free to open feature requests for any languages you need: https://github.com/Sysmagine/SemanticDiff/issues