Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

1. jj

   1 114 9,804 10.0 Rust

   Discontinued A Git-compatible VCS that is both simple and powerful [Moved to: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj] (by martinvonz)

   

   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

2. InfluxDB

   www.influxdata.com featured

   InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

   

3. sapling

   2 54 6,429 10.0 Rust

   A Scalable, User-Friendly Source Control System.

   

   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

4. lazygit

   3 176 61,136 9.8 Go

   simple terminal UI for git commands

   

   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

5. git-lfs

   4 163 13,528 9.3 Go

   Git extension for versioning large files

   

6. git-branchless

   5 61 3,722 9.0 Rust

   High-velocity, monorepo-scale workflow for Git

   

   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

7. IntelliMerge

   6 1 23 10.0 Java

   A graph-based refactoring-aware three-way merging tool for Java programs.

   

   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

8. desktop

   7 222 20,576 9.9 TypeScript

   Focus on what matters instead of fighting with Git. (by desktop)

   

   - Product designers for open-source hardware. Various design files, SVG etc.

   I’ve experimented with a “GUI only” git flow - just to see what is possible, so I could introduce the concept to others.

   I found GitHub desktop app (https://desktop.github.com/)did a great job of visually showing git flows and functions, but for a non-tech/programmming person, the tool would be daunting.

   Curiosity what your suggested tech stack would be - sans Terminal…

9. SaaSHub

   www.saashub.com featured

   SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

   

10. scalar

    8 21 1,452 4.3 C#

    Scalar: A set of tools and extensions for Git to allow very large monorepos to run on Git without a virtualization layer (by microsoft)

    

11. git-cola

    9 17 2,354 9.5 Python

    git-cola: The highly caffeinated Git GUI

    

    > Visual Studio does a decent job of abstracting the GIT nuances, but I personally use GIT Extensions, which looks and feels much better on Windows than the other cross platform UIs.

    IDEs and text editors sometimes have nice Git integrations in the UI, but I wanted standalone software that I can use for anything from various programming projects, to something like gamedev projects (with Git LFS) or arbitrary documents.

    In the end, I just forked over some money for GitKraken, it's pretty good, especially with multiple accounts on the same platforms, when you want to switch between them easily: https://www.gitkraken.com/

    There's also Sourcetree which I used before then, kind of sluggish but feature complete: https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

    For something more lightweight, I also enjoyed Git Cola on various OSes: https://git-cola.github.io/ Even Git documentation has a page on the software out there, a good deal of which is free and has good platform support: https://git-scm.com/downloads/guis

    Quite frankly, I spend like 90% of the time using a GUI interface nowadays, when I want to easily merge things, or include very specific code blocks across multiple files in a commit, or handle most of the other common operations. Of course, sometimes there's a need to drop down to the CLI, but you're right that some GUI software feels like it actually improves the usability here.

12. oxen-release

    10 25 973 9.3 Python

    Lightning fast data version control system for structured and unstructured machine learning datasets. We aim to make versioning datasets as easy as versioning code.

    

    We've been working on a data version control system called "oxen" optimized for large unstructured datasets that we are seeing more and more with the advent of many of the generative AI techniques.

    Many of these datasets have many many images, videos, audio files, text as well as structured tabular datasets that git or git-lfs just falls flat on.

    Would love anyone to kick the tires on it and let us know what you think:

    https://github.com/Oxen-AI/oxen-release

    The commands are mirrored after git so it is easy to learn, but optimized under the hood for larger datasets.

13. awesome-structure-editors

    11 11 380 6.1 Python

    A list of projectional and structural editors

    

    Yes, I think that we can do better than plain text as the source of truth, and thus git would probably need to change.

    There's work around a bunch of languages that are not based on text, some have their own editor or a tool to manage a canonical representation in text for you that would make them friendlier to git.

      - https://github.com/yairchu/awesome-structure-editors/blob/main/README.md

14. git

    12 12 852 0.0 C

    A fork of Git containing Microsoft-specific patches. (by microsoft)

    

    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-...

15. Grace

    13 4 560 7.6 F#

    Grace Version Control System (by ScottArbeit)

    

    There actually is a similar project in F#: https://github.com/ScottArbeit/Grace

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