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scalar
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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
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
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
fine with layers: e.g., large binary files via git-lfs (https://git-lfs.com) and merge conflicts in non-textual files by custom merge resolvers like Unity’s (https://flashg.github.io/GitMerge-for-Unity/).
Perhaps in the future, almost everyone will keep using Git at the core, but have so many layers to make it more intuitive and provide better merges, that what they’re using barely resembles Git at all. This flexibility and the fact that nearly everything is designed for Git and integrates with Git, are why I doubt it’s ever going away.
Some alternatives for thought:
- pijul (https://pijul.org), a completely different VCS which allegedly has better merges/rebases. In beta, but I rarely hear about it nowadays and have heard more bad than good. I don’t think we can implement this alternate rebases in Git, but maybe we don’t need to; even after reading the website, I don’t understand why pijul’s merges are better, and in particular I can’t think of a concrete example nor does pijul provide one.
- Unison (https://www.unison-lang.org). This isn’t a VCS, but a language with a radical approach to code representation: instead of code being text stored in files, code is ASTs referenced by hash and stored in essentially a database. Among other advantages, the main one is that you can rename symbols and they will automatically propagate to dependencies, because the symbols are referenced by their hash instead of their name. I believe this automatic renaming will be common in the future, whether it’s implemented by a layer on top of Git or alternate code representation like Unison (to be clear, Unison’s codebases are designed to work with Git, and the Unison project itself is stored in Git repos).
- SVN, the other widespread VCS. Google or ask ChatGPT “Git vs SVN” and you’ll get answers like this (https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/svn-vs-git/, https://stackoverflow.com/a/875). Basically, SVN is easier to understand and handles large files better, Git is decentralized and more popular. But what about the differences which can’t be resolved by layers, like lazygit for intuition and git-lfs for large files? It seems to me like even companies with centralized private repositories use Git, meaning Git will probably win in the long term, but I don’t work at those companies so I don’t really know.
- Mercurial and Fossil, the other widespread VCSs. It seems these are more similar to Git and the main differences are in the low-level implementation (https://stackoverflow.com/a/892688, https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-git.wiki#....). It actually seems like most people prefer Mercurial and Fossil over Git and would use them if they had the same popularity, or at least if they had Git’s popularity and Git had Mercury or Fossil’s. But again, these VCSs are so similar that with layers, you can probably create a Git experience which has their advantages and almost copies their UI.
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
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
- 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…
> 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.
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.
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
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-...
There actually is a similar project in F#: https://github.com/ScottArbeit/Grace