4 ms·

Not sure why you are downvoted. This is a genuinely interesting idea and seems like the basis for next gen change management.

morelisp 5y ago
They are being downvoted for not understanding how git works. If you have a 3-way diff/merge tool for ASTs you can plug it into git and use it today, and you can use it on all existing branches and historical changesets. The "problem" is no one actually wants to resolve merges that way.
- luffapi 5y ago
  There’s been plenty of times my code as been “lost” in a later commit because Git didn’t know it was the same thing.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    I don't understand how this relates to what I said without more details about what "lost" means, sorry. If you mean Git had issues finding some specific code motion to show in a diff, you can try one of the other diff algorithms, or adjust the threshold for rename/copy detection. AST-based differs would also suffer this issue; a "nice diff" is not a formal problem and does not have a universal solution. If you mean you once had a mis-merge that dropped some code you didn't want to drop, this won't go away with AST-based diffs. It will just happen at the token level instead of the line level. If you mean it's generally hard to deal with collapsing lots of branches with shared history, that's true but would also be true with AST-based approaches. This is the situation something like pijul could help with, but also raises all the other tradeoffs of snapshot vs changeset based approaches.
- nailer 5y ago
  You’re still committing formatting, and our whole ecosystem of tools is focused around text. You’re proposing a workaround rather than fixing the problem.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    I don’t know, to me whether you store the AST as text or binary sounds like ignoring the problem. Why would that matter?
    - nailer 5y ago
      Because formatting changes aren't relevant.
cellularmitosis 5y ago
This isn't specific to VCS, but I'll drop a link to this thread about structural editors which PaniczGodek has been maintaining for a few years now, just to give it more exposure: https://twitter.com/PaniczGodek/status/1195784199250284545 https://twitter.com/PaniczGodek/status/1195784199250284545

morelisp 5y ago

They are being downvoted for not understanding how git works. If you have a 3-way diff/merge tool for ASTs you can plug it into git and use it today, and you can use it on all existing branches and historical changesets. The "problem" is no one actually wants to resolve merges that way.

luffapi 5y ago
There’s been plenty of times my code as been “lost” in a later commit because Git didn’t know it was the same thing.
- morelisp 5y ago
  I don't understand how this relates to what I said without more details about what "lost" means, sorry. If you mean Git had issues finding some specific code motion to show in a diff, you can try one of the other diff algorithms, or adjust the threshold for rename/copy detection. AST-based differs would also suffer this issue; a "nice diff" is not a formal problem and does not have a universal solution. If you mean you once had a mis-merge that dropped some code you didn't want to drop, this won't go away with AST-based diffs. It will just happen at the token level instead of the line level. If you mean it's generally hard to deal with collapsing lots of branches with shared history, that's true but would also be true with AST-based approaches. This is the situation something like pijul could help with, but also raises all the other tradeoffs of snapshot vs changeset based approaches.
nailer 5y ago
You’re still committing formatting, and our whole ecosystem of tools is focused around text. You’re proposing a workaround rather than fixing the problem.
- morelisp 5y ago
  I don’t know, to me whether you store the AST as text or binary sounds like ignoring the problem. Why would that matter?
  - nailer 5y ago
    Because formatting changes aren't relevant.

cellularmitosis 5y ago

This isn't specific to VCS, but I'll drop a link to this thread about structural editors which PaniczGodek has been maintaining for a few years now, just to give it more exposure: https://twitter.com/PaniczGodek/status/1195784199250284545 https://twitter.com/PaniczGodek/status/1195784199250284545