josh VS git-branchless

Why use submodules when you can properly vendor the upstream git, and export/import commits without breaking hashes on either side?

https://github.com/josh-project/josh

We've been using josh at TVL for years and it's just amazing.

Scalar explicitly does not implement the virtualized filesystem the OP is referring to. The original Git VFS for Windows that Microsoft designed did in fact do this, but as your second link notes, Microsoft abandoned that in favor of Scalar's totally different design which explicitly was about scaling repositories without filesystem virtualization.

There's a bunch of related features they added to Git to achieve scalability without virtualization. Those are all useful and Scalar is a welcome addition. But the need for a virtual filesystem layer for large-scale repositories is still a very real one. There are also some limitations that aren't ideal; for example Git's partial clones IIRC can only be used as a "cone" applied to the original filesystem hierarchy. More generalized designs would allow mapping any arbitrary paths in the original repository to any other path in the virtual checkout. Tools like Josh can do this today with existing Git repositories[1]. That helps you get even sparser and smaller checkouts.

The Git for Windows that was referenced isn't even that big at 300GB, by the way. Game studios regularly have repositories that exist at multi-terabyte size, and they have also converged on similar virtualization solutions. For example, Destiny 2 uses a "virtual file synchronization" layer called VirtualSync[2] that reduced the working size of their checkouts by over 98%, multiple terabytes of savings per person. And in a twist of fate, VirtualSync was implemented thanks to a feature called "ProjFS" that Microsoft added to Windows... which was motivated originally by the Git VFS for Windows they abandoned!

[1] https://github.com/josh-project/josh

[2] https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1027699/Virtual-Sync-Terabytes...

Good overview, I know these sorts of pains well. Lots of hard questions and few definitive wins/right answers. How to organize a massive repository out in the open is still an open question. On that note, recently, I've been experimenting with this project called josh, which basically is like 'git subtree on extreme steroids, functioning as a git proxy':

https://josh-project.github.io/josh/

It basically lets you unify/view many repositories as a single one, or equivalent to split a mono-repo into smaller sized units of work for CI, specific teams, etc. It's bidirectional, so you push and pull from josh and everything goes into a single linear history in the mono repo. And because it's bidirectional, people in the mono-repo can still do things like make large-scale atomic changes across all sub-repositories, and those get reflected.

Josh currently isn't suitable for a lot of workloads due to various reasons (authentication is one that stands out), but it's actually the first tool I have seen that manages to offer BitKeeper-like "subtrees" that work really well, at scale, for large repos and teams. It requires some care to make sure "sub-trees" can be usable units of work, but it was one of the best features of BK in my opinion and really great for people doing one-off contributions, or isolating trees/changes to specific developers.

I'd be interested to know if there are other open alternatives to this. It's a nice point in the design space between solutions like "integrate with the filesystem layer to do sparse clones" or "just split up the repos."

With regard to repo composition, I have been following this project: https://github.com/josh-project/josh

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.