[shane_kerns]

The infrastructure around fossil and jujitsu are missing. Git isn't the best but network effects matter. For example, we use jenkins at work and there is no plugin for fossil or jujitsu. Every customer we have uses git so we can't even propose fossil. Even though we might use only 10 git commands, those commands are universally known by all to work if something goes wrong. It isn't sufficient to say that fossil or jujitsu are better. The ecosystem and mindshare for an alternative DVCS is significantly lacking unfortunately.

[misnome]

I spent some time working with jujitsu and found it relatively pleasant... except it doesn't seem at all ready for collaborative use beyond a single working folder.

Sharing the repo state seems impossible without going through the (somewhat painful) multi-step process to tag and push commits into git, and you lose all of the value that jujitsu actually adds (e.g. no evolog, no saved conflicts, no anonymous commits). There is no sharing solution beyond this - no way for me to work on the same working state in two locations beyond rsync the entire folder tree, which is no solution.

A SCM in 2026 that only works locally without being a clunky way of talking to git doesn't seem like a solution ready for prime-time. Maybe the google-internal-only backend systems work better.

My main other pain points were a) zero integration with pre-commit hooks and zero ideas how to do so (yes, CI does this, but it's nice to get all the auto-formatting and sanity checks without pushing, waiting, pulling new commits), and b) Automatically picking up all changes is great except when it doesn't work in which case it is _horrible_ and takes manual unpicking at best. Remembered to add something to .gitignore before doing something in the working directory? Great! Just never ever try to checkout a commit from before you added the .gitignore because now it's permanently absorbed into the repo. Also, if you every accidentally have a secret in your repo directory then that's also permanently in there, as far as I can tell there is no way to manually verify that things are purged and all the commentary on the jujitsu discussion forums were "Just avoid doing this in the first place".

[locknitpicker]

> Git isn't the best but network effects matter.

I think this assertion is too vague and arguably wrong. It's unclear which traits would lead a Git alternative to be claimed as better, and even if those traits, if they exist, are relevant. It's also unclear if the tradeoffs of switching tooling away from Git are worth whatever hypothetical benefit there is to be had.

I would make the bold claim that Git is undoubtedly better than any conceivable alternative, and state that the network effect is a consequence and not a side-effect. Anyone is free to try to argue against it by pointing out concrete arguments.

[brobdingnagians]

Git is only better in the same sense that Windows is better than Linux. I really need the tools I use that only run on Windows. I prefer Linux for a lot of things, including daily web development, but the experience of developing Unreal Engine on Linux is lacking. I love fossil and the many features it provides in itself and would use it for everything, except that it doesn't have (working) Intellij plugin for integration, a good GitHub alternative, etc.