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Ju Jutsu Tutorial - Introduction

Let's discover Ju Jutsu!

Ju Jutsu is a VCS (version control system) like Git or Mercurial that is fully compatible with Git. You can use it inside a Git repository with the option of going back to to Git at any time. You can in fact mix and match Git and Ju Jutsu commands, depending on which suit you more right now.

What will you get out of this tutorial?​

A hands-on introduction to Ju Jutsu where you will be trying all the commands on your own PC. It will show case real workflows, including resolving non-trivial conflicts and interacting with GitHub (e.g. to create pull requests).

You will walk away with a solid understanding of Ju Jutsu concepts and get a taste for the situations in which it might be helpful to you.

Prerequisites​

This tutorial makes certain assumptions. If those assumptions don't hold you may struggle with the tutorial.

  • You know how to use Git: While in theory Ju Jutsu is a great first VCS for new developers, such developers would require a different tutorial. Also in practice Ju Jutsu currently relies on Git for remote collaboration, so knowing Git is basically unavoidable.
  • You are comfortable using (interactive) rebase, squash and cherry-pick: In reality this is not a hard requirement but if you are not comfortable using those Git tools then you probably use a very linear Git workflow and you might feel that the workflows here presented are solving problems that you don't have. I think Ju Jutsu is still great for such a simple, linear workflow but it would probably require a different tutorial to make that case well.
  • You are ok using a CLI (command line interface): Since Ju Jutsu is quite new there are few graphical tools or IDE support. This tutorial will be using the CLI.

Differences from Git​

As a friendly warning here are some differences between Git and Ju Jutsu that may confuse you at first. I believe all the choices in Ju Jutsu are in fact better and all differences plus better workflows (or if you insist on the Git way of doing things: workarounds) will be addressed in due course during the tutorial. I claim there is nothing you can do in Git that you can't do equally well or better in Ju Jutsu.

  • The fundamental unit of change is called change not commit, even though there are commits too.
  • Everything is always committed, automatically after you modify anything.
  • There is no index (staging area).
  • Ju Jutsu uses bookmarks as the equivalent of branches but you rarely need them. Ju Jutsu is a branchless VCS. You will almost always be in what Git calls detached HEAD state. There is no way of checking out a bookmark and making it move automatically as you keep adding changes.

Here is a more detailed comparison.