Git is forever. I'm building Oak anyways (oak.space)
26 points by zdgeier 2 hours ago
ks2048 an hour ago
I would recommend just linking to a few sentences that say how Oak is different than Git, rather than a personal backstory. (https://oak.space/docs)
My initial reaction is if this is not something than could be built on top of Git, rather than replacing it. Describe the data model - what is a "commit", what is a "branch" ..., if the same as git, then why not reuse.
sourdecor an hour ago
I have always wanted a version control system that was basically Emacs/Vim/Neovim's undo-tree[0] but persistent and social. Why do I have to manually talk to git? You are a computer, track every modification I make while editing and let me decide (or help me decide) on what a checkpoint is.
stouset an hour ago
Jujutsu might be what you’re looking for then.
LoganDark an hour ago
Seconding Jujutsu! I've been working to add Jujutsu support to basically every open-source tool and framework I use, including the agentic ones [0]. While it doesn't work for everyone, I've found it can really work for some people. (like myself)
It's absolutely great for keeping a bunch of exploratory changes alive, quick prototyping, etc. as I tend to do with basically every source I have on my machine. I don't have to think at all about the stuff I hate about git (babying the index, being careful to amend and etc. right the first time because undos are annoying, etc.)
Does not support LFS or submodules though.
weinzierl an hour ago
"Git is forever"
Many things were forever until they suddenly died, but I think this is especially true for git.
I'm not saying this as a git hater, quite to the contrary. I think git is great. I also think git is an ill-fit for the majority of modern commercial software projects and there will be a breaking point where companies realize that and move on.
Banditoz an hour ago
What is git not suited for in modern development? I haven't found any reasons.
jayd16 an hour ago
Git is great but if you really haven't found any reasons then you haven't looked at all. From large files to sub modules to hook permissions and file permissions... The list goes on and on about what where git falls short.
There's plenty of workarounds too, but that's what they are. Workarounds.
gchamonlive an hour ago
fusslo 43 minutes ago
1. rewriting history
2. rebase based merge strategies - our team has 50+ devs across three continents merging into monorepo with teams maintaining submodules. By the time your merge request passes CI it has to be rebased. People are literally holding off on reviewing merge requests to make sure their own changes get in first
3. permissions for subdirectories/assets. some necessary code/modules are highly regulated and company secrets. Git cant lock certain directories based on who clones the repo
4. Agentic coding - if you don't commit then your changeset after each request is lost. JJ solves this. You could just say to commit after every request then squash the commits. But, I think this is an ergonomic argument
5. Maybe it's just my experience, but git-lfs is pretty annoying to manage on large teams and changing files to/from lfs. often easier to just delete and clone again
6. git blame on non-meaninful changes. Running a code linter to add/remove whitespace makes git blame return who ran the linter rather than who wrote the code
7. self-reported identity. every time we get new laptops (because they buy the cheapest POS) devs forget what they set for 'username'. so it ends up being 3-4 different identities with the same email
Those are just my complaints lately
z3ugma an hour ago
Armin and Ben did a nice deepdive on Mercurial vs Git and why hg should have won in a recent episode of their "nerds-chatting" style podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM1sIVIZYRg&t=3813s
WolfeReader an hour ago
1. Ease of use. Other VCS have more consistent command line interfaces; Git's interface has to be studied. In practice, people end up using GUIs with missing functionality and then end up searching for help, and a lot of real experts come to rely on powerful wrappers like Magit, LazyGit, or JJ.
(Compare to Mercurial, Fossil or Git; those systems have consistent and usable interfaces. There's much less demand for wrappers or LLM tooling since they're easy to use already.)
2. Preservation of history. Two common commands - git rebate and git push -f - cause commit history to be lost, sometimes permanently. ("Just be careful" and "Just don't use those commands" are useful pieces of advice for an individual, and virtually impossible to enforce over groups.)
3. Conflict resolution. Git forces the user to resolve conflicts ASAP so we often lose information about A. What the conflict exactly was, and B. How the individual resolved it. Most VCS have this issue; JJ allows you to commit the conflict and solve it in a separate commit, which is nice.
rogerrogerr an hour ago
How’s it an ill fit? Outside of large monorepo things, which are not the majority of modern commercial software projects, the main complaint I hear is the learning curve. But LLMs should be addressing that fairly well.
noelwelsh an hour ago
A few comments:
* The core idea sounds interesting. Make it the first paragraph, not paragraph seven.
* Spend more words describing what makes Oak different.
* "I built a version control system in my free-time called Jam". You probably didn't name your free time. "I built a version control system, called Jam, in my free time."
philipwhiuk an hour ago
"I built a version control system, in my free-time, called Jam" is fine.
AdamN an hour ago
Just "I built a version control system called Jam". The free-time thing is good for a history page but the homepage needs to tell the important part (you've got history and expertise in this subject) and then move onto what the vision is for Oak and what kind of help you need.
stonogo an hour ago
It's also fine without the commas, because nobody was confused by that structure.
chadgpt3 an hour ago
> designed for your agents
And there we go.
Pet_Ant an hour ago
What I want from a version system is to capture event in history not like changes as a files but as events that capture a process.
If I split a file in two I still want to be able to see blame correctly for the author of the function, not one file as freshly created and the other with a bunch of deletes. I wish commits could be folded into larger commits so that you can still capture the individual changes but also not see them by default when looking at the history of a file.
Just a more human centric perspective on change history where it captures the way we talk and think about changes.
WolfeReader an hour ago
"I wish commits could be folded into larger commits so that you can still capture the individual changes but also not see them by default when looking at the history of a file."
Fossil merges do this. More people need to use Fossil; it's got a ton of great ideas.
"If I split a file in two I still want to be able to see blame correctly for the author of the function, not one file as freshly created and the other with a bunch of deletes."
Now this is a good idea that I've never seen in a VCS.
packetlost an hour ago
> "If I split a file in two I still want to be able to see blame correctly for the author of the function, not one file as freshly created and the other with a bunch of deletes." > > Now this is a good idea that I've never seen in a VCS.
There's a reason no one has done that, the VCS would have to have a semantic understanding of what it's tracking. I'm sure that's possible, but I think would see extremely limited success. Honestly, it may have even been done for proprietary languages and VCS systems that have since faded into obscurity.
I'd settle for searching the git history for a particular regex/string and then running a blame on that.
Pet_Ant an hour ago
tlb an hour ago
achandlerwhite an hour ago
Grammar nitpick: "anyways" should almost awlays be "anyway"
applfanboysbgon 35 minutes ago
isodude an hour ago
"awlays" should almost always be "always"
applfanboysbgon 13 minutes ago
VCS is just about the last type of vibe-coded software I would ever trust.
IshKebab an hour ago
Does this try to solve the biggest problems with Git: submodules and LFS?
zdgeier an hour ago
Planning on some monorepo features soon that should solve some submodule problems but haven't approached yet. I have some new ideas here. And yes, no separate LFS system!
IshKebab an hour ago
> And yes, no separate LFS system!
Awesome. How does one decide which files should be stored externally, and manage that? And where is that decision stored?
zdgeier an hour ago
sublinear an hour ago
Lots of self-promotion, but no concrete comparisons where this tool does a better job than git.
The only thing to go on is this single sentence: "With virtual mounts, agents locally and in the cloud no longer need a full copy of a repo to get working."
> For the first 100 users that subscribe to a paid plan I will send you a personalized e-ink display
I don't understand anyone who feels incentivized by this. Brogrammer 2.0 is weird.
zdgeier an hour ago
Check out the homepage! https://oak.space might have what you're looking for. I can answer any questions you have here as well.
manwithopinions an hour ago
The blog post is a terrible intro, the website is much more insightful: https://oak.space/
I found the section titled “Local feature branches. Server main. One squash.” most interesting.
vova_hn2 an hour ago
I cannot imagine git being a performance bottleneck in agentic workflow.
> You can work on many tasks in parallel without needing to download everything or fight worktrees.
What does "download everything" even mean? Why would you "fight worktrees"?
nixosbestos an hour ago
Yeah, I'll just wait for jj to get more virtualized FS features, and be very, very happy with that.