I think much of the problem with this thread is people trying to convince one way is superior/inferior.

There are just multiple different ways of working. Some ways fit some people's mental models better.

You're not going to get a definitive "jujutsu is better than git" or vice versa. You should accept that some people have no problems with what you've described using jujutsu, and likewise jujutsu users should understand that not everyone can handle jj as well as they can.

Imagine a different thread where jj users take your exact scenario, and complain about solving the problem with git. You wouldn't understand their pain, because it's not painful for you. This thread is the same, just with jj and git reversed.

Personally, I don't see the pain you have. Back when I used git a lot, if I left a branch for a few weeks, I'd forget the name of the branch and would have to list all the branches (and set an alias to sort by and list the last commit dates of each) to discover the appropriate branch name. It's really not all that different from looking at all (recent) heads. Once you get used to this, you stop naming branches - other than to share with others. And when you do share with them, you cannot push (newer) changes because only bookmarked nodes and their parents can be pushed - so just prior to pushing, you advance the bookmark. With the shells I use, it's a few keystrokes before autocomplete/fzf produces the command for me - no mental effort at all.

You definitely wouldn't advance the bookmark with each commit. Only when you need to push.

And oh man, it's so nice not to have to manage all the branches. With git, I'd routinely go and delete old branches to declutter. With jj, there's simply no need to. The same with stashes. It's really nice not having to do that labor, and simultaneously not dealing with long lists.

If this doesn't appeal to you - that's fine. You're not deficient. But understand, nor are those for whom your workflow sucks.

I assume you mean named branches (bookmarks in jj)? Because anonymous branches in jj are trivial: you just `jj new <parent_change_id>` and you have a new branch.

Bookmarks aren’t that bad either IMO, especially with the recent addition of `jj bookmark advance`. Curious if you can say more about the particular difficulties you found keeping them up to date?

I’ll be honest, as a long-time jj user, I actually haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about with branches being laborious to keep up to date. Can you elaborate?

I like jujutsu simply because (despite my annoyances, which might be because I started using it 2 weeks ago) it's still faster than git.

I dislike this as well. I find it easier to keep track of branches with bookmarks, but my workflow still makes things cumbersome. I am usually working with the "megamerge" branches, and I usually want to add commits to my current branch instead of squashing my edits. However, adding commits means I have to add my commit, move my bookmark up to the branch tip (jj tug?), and then rebase the megamerge branch, versus doing nothing for squashing. I also find that when I mess up, I don't really love using `jj op log` to fix it. I want to not be in an environment where it's this easy to destroy history (I feel like git was on the other end of it).

jujutsu presents the same amount of power with fewer ideas, eg. There is no staging area. It adds new features, like jj undo.

The un-learning curve is steep if you already know git very well.

https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/3549 lets you enable automatically advancing bookmarks.

i too work with worktrees (jj workspaces) and prs (requires branches). it's easier if you give up choosing the name of your branch, and instead rely on finding things by description or your workspace name.

for prs, I usually start with a single commit, so `jj git push -c` will auto create a named branch based on the change id. And i have template like the following to push to the same branch if i decided to stack commits rather than rewrite:

    branch-push   = ["util", "exec", "--", "sh", "-c", """
    name="$(jj log --no-graph --no-pager --color=never -r 'fork_point(@ | trunk())+ & fork_point(@ | trunk())..@' -T '"push-" ++ change_id.short()')"
    jj bookmark set -r @- "${name}"
    jj git push -b "${name}"
    """]

and descriptions are slightly nicer than branch names, since they can be longer.

You don’t need easy named branches. Naming branches is a chore: since you already spend time writing commit messages, branch names are just a summarization of your commit messages but with more character restrictions.

That’s why I always use jj’s automatic commit identifiers. They are short and I don’t waste brain cycles naming things that are ephemeral. When I push, I let jj automatically creates, updates, and deletes remote git branches (`jj git push -c` for creation, plain `jj git push` for updates, `jj git push --deleted` for deletions). I do not ever have to think about branch names and it is great!

i had this exact friction trying to use jj this weekend. can't fathom for the life of me why i have to run another command that updates the branch to the next commit.

I remember being the big innovation over svn being merging. There were others things, obviously, but the distributed model + easy merges is what I remember.

I don't try to reimplement the git workflow on top of Jujutsu. I like it because I can let go of a bunch of annoying noise that I needed in Git. I like it because rebases don't have to be synchronous and modal. I like it because I can easily edit history, rearrange the commit graph, change commit descriptions, duplicate, and so much more, and even remotely (without having to checkout first). There's so much to love that I never could've even dreamed of under Git.

I like Jujutsu so much that I've been working on massive refactors to my tooling in order to support it (example: https://github.com/LoganDark/get-shit-done)

I've worked in places where they didn't know about git branches. They only had master.

Review was done by having someone sit next to you and scrolling through the code telling what you had changed.

tbh i never actually learned git, but peope working on the same repos with git seem to be ahme ones struggling with named branches... i just do jj rebase and it just works idk

Feel the same way about JJ.

It feels like Apple vs Linux. Apple being different ... just because (it gives them an artificial moat)