18 ms·

What Comes After Git

77 points by tangled 8d ago

sublinear 7d ago
> Put plainly, we do not believe that Git is the future of source control. Git has served developers well for many years, but it was designed around the constraints of 2005, not 2025, let alone 2035. For example, it was built for the Linux kernel: an open source project. Open Source is incredibly important to our industry, but this means it’s missing key features that are useful for organizations that aren’t sharing their code with everyone. This is supposed to be the most critical part of the blog post and it's really anemic. It never explains what's wrong with git.
- sam_lowry_ 7d ago
  There's money to be made trying to replace git but not succeeding )
  - holowoodman 7d ago
    Yeah, but are investors really so stupid not to notice that even the problem statement doesn't actually hold any water?
    - OhNoNotAgain_99 7d ago
      [dead]
- coffeebeqn 7d ago
  But it’s from 2005! And and it’s used for Linux. Ergo,
- Almondsetat 7d ago
  Probably something about integrating access control to a repository so a deparment has the source for a certain library, while the others only see the header files and compiled objects to use?
- HeckFeck 7d ago
  >it’s missing key features that are useful for organizations that aren’t sharing their code with everyone. I agree. Let's go back to subversion.
- steveklabnik 7d ago
  Trying to keep it high level here. Explaining this is important, but it's just an entirely different kind of post. That post would be deep in the weeds, and this one is at a high level. Both matter, for sure. And we'll put out more technical posts as time goes on. But since we don't really have much on our blog just yet, we're starting with more abstractt stuff.
asmnzxklopqw 7d ago
What problem are they trying to solve? This part is still not very clear to me.
- happymellon 7d ago
  Being able to charge you for using git.
- atprotosucks2 7d ago
  [flagged]
EddieRingle 7d ago
Like the other comments, I'm very confused at what this is meant to do other than promote a wanna-be Git competitor and yet another hyper-specific "conference". The post doesn't really make any arguments, even in the section that's suppose to make an argument. And for some reason they're adding GraphQL into the mix, somehow?
hn_submit 7d ago
Probably some A.I.-enabled version control system. I mean, everything has A.I. in it these days, right? Yawn!
nrr 7d ago
I'll echo the other comments here: this article is really anemic on the details of how ERSC intends to retool Git for the future (beyond Jujutsu as a migration path) or why there isn't a place for Git (as we know it) in the future[0]. I happen to have technical context around this problem[1], and I was rather underwhelmed by the announcement. At least mention how much of a pain in the ass the pack-protocol wire format is! Give those of us who are technical and knee-deep in Git's business something to commiserate over! That all said, Fossil mentioned! \o/ -- 0: Yeah, they mention agentic development patterns and constraints that monorepo-oriented patterns run up against, but the details are handwaved away. What about agentic development patterns in particular stress Git out? For those of us who don't use agents or have limited exposure to them, this isn't especially obvious, but the usage patterns are almost certainly reflected in other uses of Git that small-ish shops would encounter. 1: I've even looked long and hard at possibly taking my own crack at reworking Git's object store to be instead more like an append-only log, with an eye toward alleviating some of the problems that, e.g., heavy GitOps workflows can sometimes cause, let alone the fervor around agentic development. Like, this space is ripe for someone to come in and do it better, but version control is a technical tool for technical people.
- YouSkinwalker 7d ago
  A developer and user announced “Artifact” version control here on Feb 5th, 2026. Github still active. His post was deleted by admins. And on March 11 another dev copied the key components of the idea, giving it the name “Fossil”, the same name of a project he had 20 years ago, to make it seem like a continuous, long-running project even though it was not actually launched until March 11, 2026. Then Artifacts, Tangled (same dev who copied the same user on another project earlier), and a slew of other version control systems start getting attention here. Kinda funny
fergie 7d ago
For me, the actual thing that git is not fantastic for is versioning data(bases), but this article doesn't seem to address that. In fact I am struggling to parse the article's proposed problem/solution.
- deleted 7d ago
  [deleted]
OhNoNotAgain_99 7d ago
[dead]
PowerElectronix 7d ago
It seems like the article makes a good point about Git staying here for a while.
Bayart 7d ago
The article is vague, I'm having a hard time seeing if they're laying down a critique of git's underlying data representation and storage, a critique of git's UX or both. If the main issue is agent-to-git overhead, until proven otherwise I see it as more of an agentic and/or UI issue than a source-versioning one.
gonzalohm 7d ago
Giving "git was built for open source projects but not all projects are open source" as a reason why they think git won't work in the future is pretty weird
- entrope 7d ago
  That's not very close to the argument they make; the claim (right or wrong) is that large corporations often use monorepos, and those are bigger than single-project repositories like used for open source projects. Their claim is consistent with Google's experience, but somewhat at odds with (say) that of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD.
  - steveklabnik 7d ago
    It's certainly not the case that no open source projects use monorepos, you are right that the BSDs do as well. It's that those repositories are still orders of magnitude smaller than the ones that are inside of companies. Monorepos tend to be larger than polyrepos, due to the fact that you've got everything all in one repo, but that doesn't mean all monorepos must be truly large. The real issue with the open vs closed bit is that features like "this subdirectory of the repository is only writable (or even visible!) to some people" is basically nonsense for open source, but valuable to a company monorepo. Their needs are just different.
rbsmith 7d ago
This is more a response to many of the comments here than to the article, offering a perspective of what value they might bring. I’ve spent about 35+ years in and around version control / SCM, with half of that being part of the BitKeeper team, where my job was to think about sets, graphs, and weaves in the context of a team making commercial customers’ lives better along with benefit to open source world. If Git is good enough for you, know that it is not true for everybody. For some subset of that everybody, it’s worth paying to have that pain go away. And part of having that pain go away is being able to stay connected to all that is, to be enough of a superset of the current world, to not be better in an incompatible way. That’s what I see in the pictures Steve and team draw: world that interacts with Git in a way that is better for some willing to pay to have the pain go away. I agree nothing much is being said about the Non-Git Storage Engine. As I’ve spent half of my life in that world, I get it: secret sauce. I don’t expect much to be said for a while.
- giveupyousuck 7d ago
  [flagged]
- sublinear 7d ago
  Once again, what is that "pain" exactly?
  - rbsmith 7d ago
    Depends on the industry and specifics of a company. Are they game developers with multiple sites? Is the customer a large company with a lot of vendor relationships using different systems? Are they a vendor of some customizable component used by many large companies? Is there a good integration with their bug tracking? Do they need to long term support of 25 years? Pain was in some part of their process that was constrained, maybe technical (workflow or integrations), maybe legal. If Git works well enough, great! If not, maybe a different system fits better[0]. [0] - https://www.inkandswitch.com/project/backstitch/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/project/backstitch/
    - 6d ago
atprotosucks2 7d ago
[flagged]
kazinator 7d ago
[flagged]
quietraster 7d ago
the versioning model question feels more urgent now that half my commits are written by agents. curious what the author thinks the right unit of change is when a diff is mostly machine generated
- steveklabnik 7d ago
  We are huge believers in stacked diffs, both for humans and machines. That said, everyone is trying to figure out what code review means in this new world, so we're open to things changing here. You can get claude to produce small, focused stacks, rather than 10,000 line monstrosities.
crate_88 6d ago
[dead]

77 points by tangled 8d ago

> Put plainly, we do not believe that Git is the future of source control. Git has served developers well for many years, but it was designed around the constraints of 2005, not 2025, let alone 2035. For example, it was built for the Linux kernel: an open source project. Open Source is incredibly important to our industry, but this means it’s missing key features that are useful for organizations that aren’t sharing their code with everyone. This is supposed to be the most critical part of the blog post and it's really anemic. It never explains what's wrong with git.

sam_lowry_ 7d ago
There's money to be made trying to replace git but not succeeding )
- holowoodman 7d ago
  Yeah, but are investors really so stupid not to notice that even the problem statement doesn't actually hold any water?
  - OhNoNotAgain_99 7d ago
    [dead]
coffeebeqn 7d ago
But it’s from 2005! And and it’s used for Linux. Ergo,
Almondsetat 7d ago
Probably something about integrating access control to a repository so a deparment has the source for a certain library, while the others only see the header files and compiled objects to use?
HeckFeck 7d ago
>it’s missing key features that are useful for organizations that aren’t sharing their code with everyone. I agree. Let's go back to subversion.
steveklabnik 7d ago
Trying to keep it high level here. Explaining this is important, but it's just an entirely different kind of post. That post would be deep in the weeds, and this one is at a high level. Both matter, for sure. And we'll put out more technical posts as time goes on. But since we don't really have much on our blog just yet, we're starting with more abstractt stuff.

asmnzxklopqw 7d ago

What problem are they trying to solve? This part is still not very clear to me.

happymellon 7d ago
Being able to charge you for using git.
atprotosucks2 7d ago
[flagged]

EddieRingle 7d ago

Like the other comments, I'm very confused at what this is meant to do other than promote a wanna-be Git competitor and yet another hyper-specific "conference". The post doesn't really make any arguments, even in the section that's suppose to make an argument. And for some reason they're adding GraphQL into the mix, somehow?

hn_submit 7d ago

Probably some A.I.-enabled version control system. I mean, everything has A.I. in it these days, right? Yawn!

nrr 7d ago

I'll echo the other comments here: this article is really anemic on the details of how ERSC intends to retool Git for the future (beyond Jujutsu as a migration path) or why there isn't a place for Git (as we know it) in the future[0]. I happen to have technical context around this problem[1], and I was rather underwhelmed by the announcement. At least mention how much of a pain in the ass the pack-protocol wire format is! Give those of us who are technical and knee-deep in Git's business something to commiserate over! That all said, Fossil mentioned! \o/ -- 0: Yeah, they mention agentic development patterns and constraints that monorepo-oriented patterns run up against, but the details are handwaved away. What about agentic development patterns in particular stress Git out? For those of us who don't use agents or have limited exposure to them, this isn't especially obvious, but the usage patterns are almost certainly reflected in other uses of Git that small-ish shops would encounter. 1: I've even looked long and hard at possibly taking my own crack at reworking Git's object store to be instead more like an append-only log, with an eye toward alleviating some of the problems that, e.g., heavy GitOps workflows can sometimes cause, let alone the fervor around agentic development. Like, this space is ripe for someone to come in and do it better, but version control is a technical tool for technical people.

YouSkinwalker 7d ago
A developer and user announced “Artifact” version control here on Feb 5th, 2026. Github still active. His post was deleted by admins. And on March 11 another dev copied the key components of the idea, giving it the name “Fossil”, the same name of a project he had 20 years ago, to make it seem like a continuous, long-running project even though it was not actually launched until March 11, 2026. Then Artifacts, Tangled (same dev who copied the same user on another project earlier), and a slew of other version control systems start getting attention here. Kinda funny

fergie 7d ago

For me, the actual thing that git is not fantastic for is versioning data(bases), but this article doesn't seem to address that. In fact I am struggling to parse the article's proposed problem/solution.

deleted 7d ago
[deleted]

OhNoNotAgain_99 7d ago

[dead]

PowerElectronix 7d ago

It seems like the article makes a good point about Git staying here for a while.

Bayart 7d ago

The article is vague, I'm having a hard time seeing if they're laying down a critique of git's underlying data representation and storage, a critique of git's UX or both. If the main issue is agent-to-git overhead, until proven otherwise I see it as more of an agentic and/or UI issue than a source-versioning one.

gonzalohm 7d ago

Giving "git was built for open source projects but not all projects are open source" as a reason why they think git won't work in the future is pretty weird

entrope 7d ago
That's not very close to the argument they make; the claim (right or wrong) is that large corporations often use monorepos, and those are bigger than single-project repositories like used for open source projects. Their claim is consistent with Google's experience, but somewhat at odds with (say) that of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD.
- steveklabnik 7d ago
  It's certainly not the case that no open source projects use monorepos, you are right that the BSDs do as well. It's that those repositories are still orders of magnitude smaller than the ones that are inside of companies. Monorepos tend to be larger than polyrepos, due to the fact that you've got everything all in one repo, but that doesn't mean all monorepos must be truly large. The real issue with the open vs closed bit is that features like "this subdirectory of the repository is only writable (or even visible!) to some people" is basically nonsense for open source, but valuable to a company monorepo. Their needs are just different.

rbsmith 7d ago

This is more a response to many of the comments here than to the article, offering a perspective of what value they might bring. I’ve spent about 35+ years in and around version control / SCM, with half of that being part of the BitKeeper team, where my job was to think about sets, graphs, and weaves in the context of a team making commercial customers’ lives better along with benefit to open source world. If Git is good enough for you, know that it is not true for everybody. For some subset of that everybody, it’s worth paying to have that pain go away. And part of having that pain go away is being able to stay connected to all that is, to be enough of a superset of the current world, to not be better in an incompatible way. That’s what I see in the pictures Steve and team draw: world that interacts with Git in a way that is better for some willing to pay to have the pain go away. I agree nothing much is being said about the Non-Git Storage Engine. As I’ve spent half of my life in that world, I get it: secret sauce. I don’t expect much to be said for a while.

giveupyousuck 7d ago
[flagged]
sublinear 7d ago
Once again, what is that "pain" exactly?
- rbsmith 7d ago
  Depends on the industry and specifics of a company. Are they game developers with multiple sites? Is the customer a large company with a lot of vendor relationships using different systems? Are they a vendor of some customizable component used by many large companies? Is there a good integration with their bug tracking? Do they need to long term support of 25 years? Pain was in some part of their process that was constrained, maybe technical (workflow or integrations), maybe legal. If Git works well enough, great! If not, maybe a different system fits better[0]. [0] - https://www.inkandswitch.com/project/backstitch/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/project/backstitch/
  - 6d ago

atprotosucks2 7d ago

[flagged]

kazinator 7d ago

[flagged]

quietraster 7d ago

the versioning model question feels more urgent now that half my commits are written by agents. curious what the author thinks the right unit of change is when a diff is mostly machine generated

steveklabnik 7d ago
We are huge believers in stacked diffs, both for humans and machines. That said, everyone is trying to figure out what code review means in this new world, so we're open to things changing here. You can get claude to produce small, focused stacks, rather than 10,000 line monstrosities.

crate_88 6d ago

[dead]