[technojamin]

Jujutsu seems really cool, and I love that I can use it in a Git repository alongside other contributors that don't. It seems like a lot of logging features from Git aren't present, though.

Besides the mentioned lack of blame functionality[1], things like path filtering (`git log -- <PATH>`), file-following with rename detection (`git log --follow -- <FILE>`), pickaxe (`git log -S <CODE>`), and range evolution (`git log -L<START>,<END>:<FILE>`) are missing. These tools have all become pretty indispensable to me in my day-to-day work since I've learned them, and I know I can still use them since jj can use Git as a backend, but I don't think I could adopt a tool that doesn't have them as first-class features.

Do any regular users of Jujutsu have thoughts on this?

[1] https://github.com/martinvonz/jj?tab=readme-ov-file#status

[aseipp]

Following up late to this, but, broadly speaking: we mostly just haven't added these features because users haven't asked for them and we haven't otherwise gotten around to it. That's basically it. They would all be useful and/or welcome (assuming we were happy with the implementation.)

(We also don't want to necessarily just straight-up copy raw implementations, but improve on them where we can. But most of the asks here are pretty straightforward, I admit.)

> path filtering (`git log -- <PATH>`)

This already works today with `jj log`.

[technojamin]

I completely missed the `<PATHS>` argument despite being the first thing documented under `jj log`. That's definitely the most critical feature out of my list, thank you for pointing that out!

Also, it's great to hear that you're willing to accept contributions for those features. If/when Jujutsu gains critical mass, I imagine that someone will end up contributing these features.

Regarding rename detection, it seems like that is actively being worked on, which is really encouraging! https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/pull/3574

[kubanczyk]

> These tools have all become pretty indispensable to me in my day-to-day work

How much indispensable, in dollars?

[technojamin]

What? That's a weirdly money-minded question. I'm not gonna do some Google interview-esque estimation question to answer that, but I'll elaborate on how I use those features, because I enjoy discussing them.

I use line range history the most, multiple times per day, since it's a much better alternative to line blame in most situations. You get the full historical context of a line instead of just the last commit.

File blame is really useful when I'm encountering new code, and I want to quickly find out who has the most "responsibility" over it, oftentimes so I can go and ask them about it if I need more clarification.

File history is especially useful when I come back to a file that I originally wrote or was familiar with, some time has passed, and now I want to re-familiarize myself with all the changes since the last time I was familiar (could be years). Rename detection is useful when there are repository-wide restructures, which has happened a couple of time in the main repository I work on. Otherwise, your history will cut off at that refactor, which is really irritating.

I use path history like file history, but to re-familiarize myself with large modules (admittedly less often than file history, but it comes up).

I'm newer to pickaxe, but I've used it 2 or 3 times in the past year to track some chunks of code throughout a refactor. That's how a lot of these little tools that Git has work. You might only use them a few times per year, but when you need them, they're really amazing.

It seems like Jujutsu focuses a lot on the commit authoring and modification flows, and it looks like it offers improvements in those areas, but I don't see much functionality in the history investigation area. They might be considered niche features to some, but I think this functionality becomes more valuable the older and larger a codebase gets.