@dave give Jujutsu a look, it’s built on top of git’s data store (so is compatible with anything git) but the support for moving changes between branches is so much nicer to use.

@dave as one example it has a trivial to use jj split command, which provides an interactive editor to select which chunks you want in which commit, then provides you with two clean commits.

@jon I have actually checked it out! It looks pretty tasty, but I'm reluctant to move my big projects to it because wacky adventures might result. Next time I init a project, though, I'm going to give it a pop.

@jon "you should move your big projects to it, it won't break anything" being a valid answer.

My understanding is that it's all Git underneath, and you can jettison it at any point and just resume a Git workflow - correct?

@jon (also, do you know if it's gaining a lot of traction in dev land? that would be justification for becoming famillar.)

@jon and (final question, promise) can you use jj in a specific branch and leave the others as vanilla Git?

@dave I’m the only person I know using it. Sadly git, and in particular GitHub’s opinionated approach to using git, has captured everyone. Thankfully jj works fine with that, and also makes the very tedious “open fifteen stacked PRs instead of using commits like a sane person” approach less painful than usual.

@dave not really, “a branch” isn’t really an atomic thing in either git or jj’s model of the world, it’s just a pointer to a specific commit.

@jon Yeah, true. Alright, thanks! I think the answer is that I'll use it for a new project instead of migrating my big horrible mess to it. Thanks for the info!

@dave yeah, I was similarly hesitant but haven’t had any problems in practice. I think on one occasion I had to drop down to git’s oplog to unstick myself (and that may have been a lack of jj understanding at the time).