I've sadly had to back out of using jj after leaning into LLM coding assistance, as, even with an extremely well-written jj guide in its context (and literally blocking the use of git), it never failed to screw things up more than if I was just using git (I call this an "LLMpedance mismatch" problem)
If LLM coding assistance continues to increase, it's going to be a rather large speed bump to cross
One of the biggest problems is actually unsolvable if you want to keep colocated Git and git tooling around, because it has to do with how jj fundamentally works: detached HEADs, detached HEADs everywhere
You yourself may not use AI, this is for those who do and are interested in switching to jj
Magit allows selective staging/unstaging, either of hunks, or by selecting lines (AKA Emacs's "region"). I avoid staging from the git commandline, unless I'm just doing whole files.
PS: Majutsu provides this too (a magit-like tool for jj)
My biggest problem with `add -p` is correcting any patches I added or rejected by accident. Often times I skip through dozens of things I don’t want to add, then realized that last hunk was something I did need. But I can’t re-visit it, I have to start over and try extra hard to not skip past it again.
I wish the j and k shortcuts could revisit hunks I’ve already added/rejected, not just ones I haven’t reviewed yet. On a large set of unstaged changes that you mostly don’t want, it really sucks to “lose your place” in the list of hunks.
I always use git add -i which is just one level up. The tui is pretty intuitive for day to day tasks, including staging partial chunks or lines of code.
The whole "Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,k,K,j,J,g,/,e,p,P,?]?" line is pretty intimidating, but I urge anyone who still wants to understand git and be able to (themselves) use it effectively, to do "?" when you see it, read through what each action does and forcefully try them out to see what they do, in some low stakes project. Ends up being a super quick way of staging a whole bunch of work and avoiding staging other, but it's pretty weird at first glance.
it's not as easy as you said.
it can be tricky and complicated to use edit mode.
I usually use it, but still often don't understand - will this edit succeed or why it is failed.
Mercurial's `hg commit -i` with the curses interface is so much better for this it's not even funny. Fortunately I'd assume Jujutsu's UX is similar, based on arccy's comment.
I find grepdiff and this function are pretty useful if you want to pull certain hunks out of a large change set:
#!/bin/bash
# Put this into your .bashrc, or whatever.
function git-add-regex {
git diff -U0 | grepdiff -E "$1" --output-matching=hunk | git apply --cached --unidiff-zero
}
> If you’re not already using git add -p to stage your commits then you’re missing out.
After switching to jujutsu, I assure you I don't miss this feature.
jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
(And yes, it stores the staged changes as revisions, so you can always back out to a previous staged state).
> jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
You can use `git reset -p` to selectively unstage hunks the same way if you wanted to.
I've sadly had to back out of using jj after leaning into LLM coding assistance, as, even with an extremely well-written jj guide in its context (and literally blocking the use of git), it never failed to screw things up more than if I was just using git (I call this an "LLMpedance mismatch" problem)
If LLM coding assistance continues to increase, it's going to be a rather large speed bump to cross
One of the biggest problems is actually unsolvable if you want to keep colocated Git and git tooling around, because it has to do with how jj fundamentally works: detached HEADs, detached HEADs everywhere
You yourself may not use AI, this is for those who do and are interested in switching to jj
I don't let LLMs make commits for me - git or jj.
OK, OK - I lie. For personal projects I do - some handle jj decently well. But at work I don't let it make any commits ... and it never tries to.
What tools are you using that won't work with detached heads?
Magit allows selective staging/unstaging, either of hunks, or by selecting lines (AKA Emacs's "region"). I avoid staging from the git commandline, unless I'm just doing whole files.
PS: Majutsu provides this too (a magit-like tool for jj)
VSCode also allows staging/unstaging specific hunks by hovering over the hunk near the left/right separator in diff view - super handy when I need it!
Neogit, Magit inspired, does the same for Neovim. Would recommend!
I think you can do the same with tig and lazyvim. Sometimes you just need interactivity.
My biggest problem with `add -p` is correcting any patches I added or rejected by accident. Often times I skip through dozens of things I don’t want to add, then realized that last hunk was something I did need. But I can’t re-visit it, I have to start over and try extra hard to not skip past it again.
I wish the j and k shortcuts could revisit hunks I’ve already added/rejected, not just ones I haven’t reviewed yet. On a large set of unstaged changes that you mostly don’t want, it really sucks to “lose your place” in the list of hunks.
From the article, try J and K instead of j and k; that moves to next/previous hunk, not next/previous unreviewed hunk.
From skimming through the article, isn't that what the uppercase variants do?
In the case of a newly committed file you can add just the file with
git add . -N
And then review the text itself as part of the git add -p workflow
The worst part of this workflow is when you accidentally run `git commit -am` at the end and destroy all of your careful staging.
I always use git add -i which is just one level up. The tui is pretty intuitive for day to day tasks, including staging partial chunks or lines of code.
I find splitting hunks a pain. I wish I could just split by line, would be a great feature.
> splitting hunks a pain
Sublime Merge for the win; a fantastic visual interface with context and reversible inputs. Don't leave home without it!
Use 'e' in -p mode and you can edit the hunks as you wish, choose lines, etc.
The whole "Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,k,K,j,J,g,/,e,p,P,?]?" line is pretty intimidating, but I urge anyone who still wants to understand git and be able to (themselves) use it effectively, to do "?" when you see it, read through what each action does and forcefully try them out to see what they do, in some low stakes project. Ends up being a super quick way of staging a whole bunch of work and avoiding staging other, but it's pretty weird at first glance.
it's not as easy as you said. it can be tricky and complicated to use edit mode. I usually use it, but still often don't understand - will this edit succeed or why it is failed.
Mercurial's `hg commit -i` with the curses interface is so much better for this it's not even funny. Fortunately I'd assume Jujutsu's UX is similar, based on arccy's comment.
I've used tig for longer than I can remember for my selective staging needs.
use jj, the default is to select by line
Super useful, and easy to do in the VS Code merge pane.
I find grepdiff and this function are pretty useful if you want to pull certain hunks out of a large change set:
https://gist.github.com/smuuf/76bde33d65b3dbbc2411e8519f3e6c...IntelliJ has that since 2018, with visual change-by-change checkboxes that should go into each commit, very handy.
Vin fugitives difftool is even better
Also, you can use -p for stash push
and also for git restore
and also for `git reset`, when you added one thing by mistake.