git VS jj

Microsoft had a bunch of solutions to handle their massive Windows repo: VFS for Git (GVFS), Scalar, and now it has a bunch of MS specific patches on top of the official git client, but apparently that one is also not required any more as partial clone is now supported on azure as well (which is another such implementation from Microsoft employees that made it to both GitHub and upstream git).

https://github.blog/2020-01-17-bring-your-monorepo-down-to-s...

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/introducing-scalar/

https://github.com/microsoft/git

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/git-partial-clone-now-...

That was discontinued (like multiple times under different names). And is moved into a git fork. https://github.com/microsoft/git

Interesting! It seems some of Scalar from late 2021 has already made it into the official git project's contrib dir [0]. It looks like Scalar is mostly an opinionated way to configure git [1], especially by using git partial-clone.

Git partial-clone looks almost perfect, except it only downloads and displays files explicitly added to the git sparse-checkout list. I want some "magic" vfs shenanigans that lets me view and browse the full repo exactly as if the full repo where checked out, but when I open a directory or file the contents are downloaded on-demand.

[0]: https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/contrib/scalar

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/git/blob/vfs-2.37.0/Documentati...

Ironically, Microsoft has been a major contributor to improvements in git for handling large repos after Windows was migrated to git.

https://github.com/microsoft/git

300GB git repo... anyway, good to see there's work for merge in back to git proper, though it seems like that is still a work in progress (maybe) as https://github.com/Microsoft/git/ still seems pretty active.

This is well written and deserves my upvote, because sparse-checkout is part of git and knowing how it works is useful.

That said, there's absolutely no reason to structure your code in a monorepo.

Here's what I think GitHub is doing:

1) Encourage monorepo adoption

2) Build tooling for monorepos

3) Selling tooling to developers stranded in monorepos

Microsoft, which owns GitHub, created the microsoft/git fork linked in the article, and they explain their justification here: https://github.com/microsoft/git#why-is-this-fork-needed

> Well, because Git is a distributed version control system, each Git repository has a copy of all files in the entire history. As large repositories, aka monorepos grow, Git can struggle to manage all that data. As Git commands like status and fetch get slower, developers stop waiting and start switching context. And context switches harm developer productivity.

I believe that Google's brand is so big that it led to this mass cognitive dissonance, which is being exploited by GitHub.

To be clear, here are the two ideas in conflict:

* Git is decentralized and fast, and Google famously doesn't use it.

* Companies want to use "industry standard" tech, and Google is the standard for success.

Now apply those observations to a world where your engineers only use "git".

The result is market demand to misuse git for monorepos, which Microsoft is pouring huge amounts of resources into enabling via GitHub.

It makes great sense that GitHub wants to lean into this. More centralization and being more reliant on GitHub's custom tooling is obviously better for GitHub.

It just so happens that GitHub is building tools to enable monorepos, essentially normalizing their usage.

Then GitHub can sell tools to deal with your enormous monorepo, because your traditional tools will feel slow and worse than GitHub's tools.

In other words, GitHub is propping up the failed monorepo idea as a strategy to get people in the pipeline for things like CodeSpaces: https://github.com/features/codespaces

Because if you have 100 projects and they're all separate, you can do development locally for each and it's fast and sensible. But if all your projects are in one repo, the tools grind to a halt, and suddenly you need to buy a solution that just works to meet your business goals.

VFS for Git was superceded by https://github.com/microsoft/scalar and then many of the features were merged into mainline git, so what is left now is a thin shell around git features in the form of MS's forked git binary: https://github.com/microsoft/git

Jujutsu is along the lines of what you describe: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

You can drop it in and work seamlessly from git repos

Pull Requests (or Merge Requests) are merged only when (1) all of the automated tests pass; and (2) enough necessary reviewers have indicated approval.

Git doesn't tell you when it's necessary to have full test coverage and manual infosec review in development cycles that produce releases, and neither do Pull Requests.

https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-19552164 ctrl-f hubflow

It looks like datasift's gitflow/hubflow docs are 404'ing, but the original nvie blog post [1] has the Git branching workflow diagrams; which the wpsharks/hubflow fork [3] of datasift/gitflow fork [2] of gitflow [1]has a copy of in the README:

[1] https://github.com/nvie/gitflow

[2] https://github.com/datasift/gitflow

[3] https://github.com/wpsharks/hubflow?tab=readme-ov-file

https://learngitbranching.js.org/ is still a great resource, and it could work on mobile devices.

The math of VCS deltas and mutable and immutable content-addressed DAG nodes identified by 2^n bits describing repo/$((2*inf)) bits ;

>> "ugit – Learn Git Internals by Building Git in Python" https://www.leshenko.net/p/ugit/

SLSA.dev is a social construct atop e.g. git, which is really a low-level purpose-built tool and Perl and now Python porcelain.

jj (jujutsu) is a git-compatible VCS CLI: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

"Ask HN: Best Git workflow for small teams" (2016)

You will probably like Jujutsu, which takes much inspiration from Mercurial: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

It isn't a 1-to-1 clone, either. But tools like revsets are there, cset evolution is "built in" to the design, etc. There is no concept of phases, we might think about adding that, but there is a concept of immutable commits (so you don't overwrite public ones.)

It also has many novel features that make it stand out. We care a lot about performance and usability. Give it a shot. I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

Disclosure: I am a developer of Jujutsu. I do it in my spare time.

I have created a discussion. Thank you both

https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/discussions/2691

> why don't version control systems (especially ones that can change history) have undo/redo functionality out of the box?

It's true. And Jujutsu has undo functionality out of the box, too. It's not just Sapling. :) https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

Git made the only choice a popular VCS can make. History rewrites will exist, period. If you're opposed to history rewrites, then git gives you the tools to ensure the repos you control are not rewritten, and that's all it can do in a world where people have control of their own computers.

If Fossil ever becomes as popular as git, people will create software that allows history rewriting in Fossil, and that's fine. People will do what they want on their own computer, and I think it's morally wrong to try and stop that.

Another user in this thread linked to jj [0], an alternative git client that does some pretty weird things. For example, it replaces the working tree with a working commit and commits quite often. I like git and that seems weird to me, but I'm not offended, people can do what they want on their own computer and I have the tools to ensure repos under my control are not effected. That's all I can hope for.

[0]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

I recently found out about another project called jj: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj. It takes inspiration from Pijul and others but is git-compatible.

https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

I think maybe both fossil and bitkeeper are more intuitive too.

Did you try any of those?