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saghmyesterday at 1:58 PM1 replyview on HN

> jj edit is the biggest jj footgun I can think of

Honestly, this is only because `git checkout` is so convoluted that we've collectively changed our expectations around the UX. "checkout" can mean switching to another branch (and creating it if you specify a flag but erroring if you don't), looking at a commit (in which case you have "detached HEAD" and can't actually make changes until you make a branch) or resetting a file to the current state of HEAD (and mercy on your soul if you happen to name a branch the same as one of your files). Instead of having potentially wildly different behavior based on the "type" of the thing you pass to it, `jj edit` only accepts one type: the commit you want to edit. A branch (or "bookmark", as jj seems to call it now) is another way of specifying the commit you want to edit, but it's still saying "edit the commit" and not "edit the bookmark". Unfortunately, the expectation for a lot of people seems to be that "edit" should have the same convoluted behavior as git, and I'm not sure how to bridge that gap without giving up part of what makes jj nice in the first place.


Replies

nightskiyesterday at 2:08 PM

It's not "wildly" different behavior based on the thing it's pointing to. In all 3 cases, the command is pointed at a commit and the behavior is the same. Once you know that branches/HEAD are just named pointers to commits, then it becomes obvious you are always just working on commits and branches/ids/HEAD etc are just ways of referencing them.

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