spr VS jj

Graphite is neat. If you want something lighter-weight, spr[1] is also worth taking a look at as an entirely client-side "solution" to PR stacking.

Unfortunately, it is very hard to build good code review tooling on top of GitHub due to the severe impedance mismatch between the two models as well as GitHub API limitations and rate limits. That mismatch cannot be fully resolved (branches vs. patches) and results in constant friction, and you end up trusting a third party with full control over your repositories and approval workflows.

Graphite is the best attempt I've seen so far, but it still doesn't come anywhere close to Gerrit[2], which simply uses plain Git commits. Every commit becomes a review, and stacking is accomplished by simply pushing multiple commits. No custom tooling required - just `git push`.

It has very, very good code review UX and allows meaningful and in-depth back-and-forth during a code review, without losing context or having to re-review the entire diff. Once you're past the initial learning curve, it is blissful.

Gerrit is open source and it's what Google uses for many of their public projects such as Chromium and Android, and it is quite easy to self-host. It is entirely built on JGit and even stores code reviews as Git commits alongside the repositories.

If you want to give it a try - there's a well-maintained public instance, Gerrithub[3], operated by Gerritforge. Many open source projects use it.

[1]: https://github.com/ejoffe/spr

[2]: https://www.gerritcodereview.com/

[3]: https://gerrithub.io

The CLI doesn't help with stacked commits, though. There's tools like spr[1] but none of them are anywhere as pleasant to use as Gerrit (or Phabricator, I guess).

[1]: https://github.com/ejoffe/spr

Haven't tried this one but Reviewable and Graphite. They're all very nice and yours looks nice also. The problem with all these third party SaaS-es on top of GitHub:

- You have to trust a random (no offense meant!) SaaS company with wide-ranging access to your repository.

- GitHub API rate limits end up causing issues sooner or later. For instance, Reviewable would randomly break and ask you to add more admin users so it could load balance API requests across multiple accounts!

- Likewise, you are still forced into the PR model and things that are trivial in Gerrit, like stacked diffs, are still hard. spr helps[1], but at that point you are piling workarounds on top of workarounds, might as well use a tool that supports the workflow natively...

[1]: https://github.com/ejoffe/spr

But, probably better to use https://github.com/ejoffe/spr (which I found many months after writing the create-stack script). Though, in this particular PR's case, it would have been a lot of work to preserve the commit IDs in the commit messages thanks to its generated nature; if you have a stack produced by hand, it'd work a lot better because a human is editing the PR and its description.

Another tool to look out for: https://github.com/ejoffe/spr

I've heard good things from our customers about spr for GitHub (https://github.com/ejoffe/spr). It extends git with useful commands and hooks directly into GitHub PRs. We'll be adding some direct support for the tool in Reviewable shortly.

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?