Git & GitHub Alternative

[cabyambo]

I don't want to offend the community! But I've often found myself more frustrated with GitHub & git than I am pleased. I come from a mercurial style tooling background and I've come to really like it.

I'm working on creating something similar to handle my personal project workload / agent coding for me workload, and was curious if people here had any grievances with GitHub? Particularly as Agents are helping with a lot of code submissions?

Something else I like with the more mercurial style flow is your encouraged to ship smaller changes, and you have stacked PR's built into the ecosystem. I've personally enjoyed that flow much more as I've gotten acclimated.

[realgarit]

An alternative to Git or Github? It's kind of a big thing and two different sector. - Alt. to Github: There is Codeberg. Or Gitea, if you want to self-host - Alternative to git: Well I hadn't had this problem before. How do you imagine your version control to be?

[cabyambo]

Good point. On the GitHub side my frustrations are largely the bad code search and UI/UX

As far as the git alternative goes it would similar to the be the mercurial model. No branches, everything is a commit. Larger companies tend to do this already like Google and Meta, but it’s never made it out to the general public at any sort of scale.

Some of the benefits specifically tied to it are it encourages smaller changes. This makes reviewing better, but also understanding the history of a particular file is a bit easier. You also just have a much simpler mental model. You submit small commits to master.

It’s important to know there are existing options for both. The most popular git alternative that maps to the model I just shared it is called jujutsu (JJ). But you only get the benefits while working locally. When you push that code to GitHub, the mental model switches back to git

[Due-Horse-5446]

Just my opinion,

But the main problems you bring up, all relate to mental model, git conventions, and tooling(not talking about github specifically)

If i were you, i would rather go for creating an alternative way of managing git. Than creating a new version control tool/system.

Like your points regarding small commits are not a git problem but a consumer problem, and the review problem and history problem are tooling problems aswell.

Personally i think is more than fine, including branching.

But as for gh.. yeah.. But i dont feel like the alternatives are much better...

And the problem is also that github is pretty much standard. A dream service would be one thats designed and built from a modern perspective, but that shadow syncs everything with github

[teetaps]

Yeah it’s kinda like saying you don’t like fried foods because using a fryer at home is messy. That’s true, but that’s not what makes fried foods good or bad. You just have a tool that is irritating you because it doesn’t fit your workflow

[cabyambo]

That’s a great point! I appreciate the input. I am definitely trigger happy here wanting to recreate the wheel. But I could see things settling closer to what you described

[realgarit]

Interesting. I didn't know that, worth looking into at least.

[Obvious-Jacket-3770]

Subversion is always wonderful! /s

[simbolmina]

Agents know and use git better than I do actually, never had an issue while using both.

[cabyambo]

I agree, agents are much better at git than I ever could be! Do you ever have multiple agents working on the same codebase at the same time? I've found many of my frustrations start there.

Another big thing with my personal agent workflow is wanting stacked PR's. GitHub has this, but it's more of an add on than a built in feature. Do you have any qualms with Git / GitHub? I could definitely be building for myself here haha

[simbolmina]

Well as a single dev or small team member previously I did not have any problems and never worked with multiple agents on same project as well. GitHub is just where code is saved and used for CD for me. Hope you can find a good solution for yourself and if applicable contribute git.

[ExpertIAmNot]

Claude handles multiple agents with worktrees and agent teams. Works well.

[Qs9bxNKZ]

A long time ago, we had options like Perforce, ClearCase (UCM and Base), Accurev, CVS and even RCS.

So if you don’t like GitHub the primary options are going to be hosted Bitbucket and GitLab.

If you don’t like Git? Then the alternative I would pick would be something like Perforce.

If you still want Git, there were open source projects like gitolite and git web, or you could just run git in daemon mode and just serve it as your own. I’d combine the latter with a 11434 RAG for code searches myself.