Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Documentation, training, and relative ease of acquisition and installation are properties of the git ecosystem that are hard to replicate outside of an organization with a business case like Google.

That's the setup for: Who are the intended users and in what context will they use it?

If it's just you or you and your employees, selling no github can be straightforward. If it's your boss and some other teams, it's gonna be harder. Good luck.

View on HN

Both Sapling and Jujutsu are compatible with Git repositories, and there are even settings to have the `.git` directory exposed so that all of your existing tools will be able to run Git commands, show hunk changes in the gutter, etc. For all intents and purposes, you can use them in place of or alongside Git, and none of your colleagues will really need to know. This is a significant advantage over competing non-Git systems, and one of the major selling points that incentivize people to even try it at all.

If it means anything, I have been using Git for 15 years and am one of the earliest GitHub users, and I have not regularly used Git for nearly anything, in any job, for over ~1.5 years now. (Disclosure: I am also one of the Jujutsu developers though, so take that for what it is.)

Not to dissuade people from looking into alternatives, but the high quality integration that Git has with every single code editor in wide use today is a huge advantage over every other VCS imo. As far as I can tell, the closest to it in that regard is Subversion, but it's not all that close. One of my friends is getting into Plastic SCM, for fair reasons, but Plastic doesn't have a UI as fun as Magit.

Genuinely what’s the big deal? I used Git as a frontend to a Subversion remote because that’s what “IT” had. Any decent Git contender (read: worthy early adopting) will have the same capability.

Right now both Git power users and Git anti-users (minimum care) cooperate on the same code. Some making fantastic Git histories (or yak shaving with rebase too hard) and some doing “backup for the dayy”.

Maybe one of them is even using Jujutsu behind the scenes. Who knows? Ahh, maybe that’s why he has forgotten that one switch to git-rebase that you need two times a quarter.

You don’t need any momentum or organization backing or people in your corner in order to start trying out a Git alternative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com