Jujutsu—a version control system

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Introduction

Jujutsu is a Git-compatible DVCS. It combines features from Git (data model, speed), Mercurial (anonymous branching, simple CLI free from "the index", revsets, powerful history-rewriting), and Pijul/Darcs (first-class conflicts), with features not found in most of them (working-copy-as-a-commit, undo functionality, automatic rebase, safe replication via rsync, Dropbox, or distributed file system).

The command-line tool is called jj for now because it's easy to type and easy to replace (rare in English). The project is called "Jujutsu" because it matches "jj".

Jujutsu is relatively young, with lots of work to still be done. If you have any questions, or want to talk about future plans, please join us on Discord or start a GitHub Discussion; the developers monitor both channels.

Important

Jujutsu is an experimental version control system. While Git compatibility is stable, and most developers use it daily for all their needs, there may still be work-in-progress features, suboptimal UX, and workflow gaps that make it unusable for your particular use.

News and Updates 📣

• Jan 2023: Martin gave a presentation about Google's plans for Jujutsu at Git Merge 2022! See the slides or the recording.

Getting started

Follow the installation instructions to obtain and configure jj.

The best way to get started is probably to go through the tutorial. Also see the Git comparison, which includes a table of jj vs. git commands.

As you become more familiar with Jujutsu, the following resources may be helpful:

• The FAQ.
• The Glossary.
• The jj help command (e.g. jj help rebase).

If you are using a prerelease version of jj, you would want to consult the docs for the prerelease (main branch) version. You can also get there from the docs for the latest release by using the website's version switcher. The version switcher is visible in the header of the website when you scroll to the top of any page.

Features

Compatible with Git

Jujutsu has two backends. One of them is a Git backend (the other is a native one ¹). This lets you use Jujutsu as an alternative interface to Git. The commits you create will look like regular Git commits. You can always switch back to Git. The Git support uses the libgit2 C library.

You can even have a "co-located" local repository where you can use both jj and git commands interchangeably.

The working copy is automatically committed

Jujutsu uses a real commit to represent the working copy. Checking out a commit results a new working-copy commit on top of the target commit. Almost all commands automatically amend the working-copy commit.

The working-copy being a commit means that commands never fail because the working copy is dirty (no "error: Your local changes to the following files..."), and there is no need for git stash. Also, because the working copy is a commit, commands work the same way on the working-copy commit as on any other commit, so you can set the commit message before you're done with the changes.

The repo is the source of truth

With Jujutsu, the working copy plays a smaller role than with Git. Commands snapshot the working copy before they start, then they update the repo, and then the working copy is updated (if the working-copy commit was modified). Almost all commands (even checkout!) operate on the commits in the repo, leaving the common functionality of snapshotting and updating of the working copy to centralized code. For example, jj restore (similar to git restore) can restore from any commit and into any commit, and jj describe can set the commit message of any commit (defaults to the working-copy commit).

Entire repo is under version control

All operations you perform in the repo are recorded, along with a snapshot of the repo state after the operation. This means that you can easily revert to an earlier repo state, or to simply undo a particular operation (which does not necessarily have to be the most recent operation).

Conflicts can be recorded in commits

If an operation results in conflicts, information about those conflicts will be recorded in the commit(s). The operation will succeed. You can then resolve the conflicts later. One consequence of this design is that there's no need to continue interrupted operations. Instead, you get a single workflow for resolving conflicts, regardless of which command caused them. This design also lets Jujutsu rebase merge commits correctly (unlike both Git and Mercurial).

Basic conflict resolution:

Juggling conflicts:

Automatic rebase

Whenever you modify a commit, any descendants of the old commit will be rebased onto the new commit. Thanks to the conflict design described above, that can be done even if there are conflicts. Branches pointing to rebased commits will be updated. So will the working copy if it points to a rebased commit.

Comprehensive support for rewriting history

Besides the usual rebase command, there's jj describe for editing the description (commit message) of an arbitrary commit. There's also jj diffedit, which lets you edit the changes in a commit without checking it out. To split a commit into two, use jj split. You can even move part of the changes in a commit to any other commit using jj move.

Status

The tool is fairly feature-complete, but some important features like (the equivalent of) git blame are not yet supported. There are also several performance bugs. It's also likely that workflows and setups different from what the core developers use are not well supported.

I (Martin von Zweigbergk) have almost exclusively used jj to develop the project itself since early January 2021. I haven't had to re-clone from source (I don't think I've even had to restore from backup).

There will be changes to workflows and backward-incompatible changes to the on-disk formats before version 1.0.0. Even the binary's name may change (i.e. away from jj). For any format changes, we'll try to implement transparent upgrades (as we've done with recent changes), or provide upgrade commands or scripts if requested.

Related work

There are several tools trying to solve similar problems as Jujutsu. See related work for details.

Contributing

We welcome outside contributions, and there's plenty of things to do, so don't be shy. Please ask if you want a pointer on something you can help with, and hopefully we can all figure something out.

We do have a few policies and suggestions for contributors. The broad TL;DR:

• Bug reports are very welcome!
• Every commit that lands in the main branch is code reviewed.
• Please behave yourself, and obey the Community Guidelines.
• There is a mandatory CLA you must agree to. Importantly, it does not transfer copyright ownership to Google or anyone else; it simply gives us the right to safely redistribute and use your changes.

Mandatory Google Disclaimer

I (Martin von Zweigbergk, martinvonz@google.com) started Jujutsu as a hobby project in late 2019, and it has evolved into my full-time project at Google, with several other Googlers (now) assisting development in various capacities. That said, this is not a Google product.

License

Jujutsu is available as Open Source Software, under the Apache 2.0 license. See LICENSE for details about copyright and redistribution.

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1. At this time, there's practically no reason to use the native backend. The backend exists mainly to make sure that it's possible to eventually add functionality that cannot easily be added to the Git backend. ↩︎