[lowboy]

Another good sales pitch is `jj undo`[0]. It puts the repo back to previous state, regardless of what the mutative operation was. It's a powerful and simple safety net that unlocks experimentation.

It does this by adding an new operation on top of the operation log[1], so you don't lose repository states by moving up + down the op log. There's a corresponding `jj redo` as well.

0: https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/cli-reference/#jj-undo

1: https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/operation-log/

[socalgal2]

jj undo is great but it's a one time thing. You can't do jj this, jj that, jj other, jj undo, jj undo, jj undo AFIACT. You have to look into the op log and jj op restore for that. It's nice you can get back to where you were though.

The biggest issue for me is it requires active change management (or feels like it). In git I do `git checkout foo` then I start editing. If I want to see what may changes are since foo then `git diff` tells me. With jj though, `jj edit foo` is the to git, state of the repo ALL changes to foo. So any new edits are invisible. So, instead of `jj edit` I have to do `jj edit` `jj new`, then later squash those into foo

I know there are similar cases in git but I guess I'm just used to git so I wasn't using those cases.

that said, I'm mostly enjoying jj. Though quite often i get a conflict I don't understand. Today I got 2 and it told me choose A or B. I did `jj diff -r A -r B` and it said no diffs. If no diffs aren't there no conflicts? I'm sure someone gets it but it was annoying to just have to pick one to abandon

[mkeeter]

> jj undo is great but it's a one time thing.

For what it's worth, this changed in v0.33.0:

> jj undo is now sequential: invoking it multiple times in sequence repeatedly undoes actions in the operation log.

(release notes: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/releases/tag/v0.33.0)

[steveklabnik]

I’m not sure if it’s a typo, but you don’t need to edit and then new, you can just new. It’s a good habit to get into as a replacement for checking something out.

I’m not sure what happened in your conflict situation either, that does sound frustrating. EDIT: Oh, I wonder if it was this: https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/technical/concurrency/ specifically, that I bet the repo was being modified concurrently, and so you ended up with a divergent change.

[lowboy]

> You can't do jj this, jj that, jj other, jj undo, jj undo, jj undo AFIACT

You can as of v0.33.0[0]. Previous behaviour was that `jj undo; jj undo` would leave you where you started (it undid the undo).

> The biggest issue for me is it requires active change management (or feels like it). In git I do `git checkout foo` then I start editing. If I want to see what may changes are since foo then `git diff` tells me. With jj though, `jj edit foo` is the to git, state of the repo ALL changes to foo. So any new edits are invisible. So, instead of `jj edit` I have to do `jj edit` `jj new`, then later squash those into foo

I'm not 100% clear on what you mean here, but a few things that might help:

1. In jj you don't "checkout" a branch, you edit a specific commit. That commit might be pointed to by a bookmark but it doesn't have to be. A jj bookmark is roughly equivalent to what git calls a branch. Note that a git branch, and a jj bookmark are just pointers to a commit, as illustrated here[1]).

2. If you want to resume work on a branch/bookmark instead of `git checkout BRANCHNAME` you'd do `jj new BRANCHNAME` which puts a new commit on top of the commit and sets it as a working copy.

3. Bookmarks don't auto advance like they do in git. So adding new commits on top of a "branch" will leave the bookmark where it is until you `jj bookmark set/move` it. So you could squash commits down into the "foo" bookmark, but you could also move "foo" to point to subsequent commits.

4. Not sure what you mean by edits being invisible, but if it's seeing a diff from main to the tip of your branch (with a change id of ex. XYZ) it would be `jj diff -f main -t XYZ`.

0: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#0330---2...

1: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/111709462585184810