7 ms·

Sapling – A VCS from Meta

77 points by bensadeh 3y ago

anotherhue 3y ago
Alas, sl is a command name already well taken. https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl
- 0x6c6f6c 3y ago
  I honestly can't tell if this is a joke.
  - 1propionyl 3y ago
    It is a joke, and a rather old one. It used to be somewhat common for sysadmins to add it to shared systems as a little harmless prank on their users. Some of us yet keep the torch lit...
  - vitiral 3y ago
    Can't tell if joke command is joke.
    - nurettin 3y ago
      fwiw I installed it as a cruel joke once, while teaching a clumsy typer about linux.
- 1propionyl 3y ago
  I have a pernicious habit of throwing sl on any shared server I manage. There's also: https://github.com/rwos/gti https://github.com/rwos/gti As you might guess, it's for git typos and renders a Volkswagen Golf GTI. Amusingly, if your typo is gti push or gti pull it also includes a stick man pushing or pulling the vehicle.
loeg 3y ago
Any new reason to discuss this now? I guess the context is the Jujutsu (jj) git-replacement which has been discussed a couple of times recently. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33726274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33726274 And a bunch of other zero-comment threads.
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Ask HN: Is Sapling, the new SCM/DVCS, getting any traction in the wild? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 - Dec 2022 (9 comments) Sapling: A new source control system with Git-compatible client - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 - Nov 2022 (525 comments) Eden - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31006003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31006003 - April 2022 (227 comments)
Flux159 3y ago
Have been using Sapling for a year and also used Meta's internal Mercurial fork before that - the interop with Github PRs and familiarity with branchless development is one of the huge benefits of Sapling. Being able to just "sl clone <github_url>" and then use sapling CLI commands is nice, but also Sapling's interactive smartlog in VSCode https://sapling-scm.com/docs/addons/vscode/ https://sapling-scm.com/docs/addons/vscode/ makes it easy to learn commands as well while giving a UI to commit, amend, and move diffs. I think the only thing Sapling's really missing is git-lfs support which would make repos with binary assets easier to manage.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Does it only work with GitHub specifically or any git host (e.g. self hosted Gitlab)?
  - Shish2k 3y ago
    Any git host, though the integrations for eg “show pull-request code-review status” are configured for github by default
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  Btw Metas "internal mercurial fork" has been sapling for a while now. If you work there try typing `hg --version`.
rawrawrawrr 3y ago
Git is to SVN as Sapling is to Git. It's really a great tool, makes version control a lot more productive imo.
reissbaker 3y ago
When I was at Meta, using the custom VCS tooling was pretty great, especially considering the repo size. That being said, for both this and Jujutsu, I feel like without open-sourcing the secret sauce (the super-scalable backend), it's hard to understand why anyone outside of the respective orgs would adopt; it's a not-well-known layer on top of Git, which is: a) Known by almost anyone you're likely to hire or work with, and b) Will have all the same scalability problems with large monorepos regardless of what client you're using. If Sapling and Jujutsu don't solve the scaling problems, and everyone already knows git (and you're still using git under the hood), what's the point? It's nice that it's open-source but to get traction I feel like they need to open-source the backends. I'm sure plenty of mid-sized companies struggling to manage their git repos would be happy to use the Meta/Google solution to the problem, but neither of these projects includes the part where the problem gets solved.
- ahahahahah 3y ago
  They've actually open sourced almost everything you need. It includes the cli, the virtual filesystem, and the backend. From github: Sapling SCM is comprised of three main components: The Sapling client: The client-side sl command line and web interface for users to interact with Sapling SCM. Mononoke: A highly scalable distributed source control server. (Not yet supported publicly.) EdenFS: A virtual filesystem for efficiently checking out large repositories. (Not yet supported publicly.) And from the mononoke page: Mononoke is still in development. We are making it available now because we plan to start making references to it from our other open source projects. The version that we provide on GitHub is omitting some functions. This is because the code is exported verbatim from an internal repository at Facebook, and not all of the scaffolding from our internal repository can be easily extracted. The key areas where we need to shore things up are: Support for running thrift based apis. Production metadata SQL support (e.g. something like a MySQL backend). We provide sqlite in OSS for now. Production blobstore storage backends (e.g. something like S3). We provide SQL (on sqlite) and File System backends currently in OSS. Linux is Mononoke's primary target plaform with OSS CI also running on MacOS. Other Unix-like OSes may be supported in the future.
  - 3y ago
LarsDu88 3y ago
Really would be nice for this monorepo oriented alternative to git to take off. There are many benefits to monorepos when something more scalable than git is used!
- loeg 3y ago
  You can just scale git in the same way! VFSforGit or whatever.

77 points by bensadeh 3y ago

anotherhue 3y ago

Alas, sl is a command name already well taken. https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl

0x6c6f6c 3y ago
I honestly can't tell if this is a joke.
- 1propionyl 3y ago
  It is a joke, and a rather old one. It used to be somewhat common for sysadmins to add it to shared systems as a little harmless prank on their users. Some of us yet keep the torch lit...
- vitiral 3y ago
  Can't tell if joke command is joke.
  - nurettin 3y ago
    fwiw I installed it as a cruel joke once, while teaching a clumsy typer about linux.
1propionyl 3y ago
I have a pernicious habit of throwing sl on any shared server I manage. There's also: https://github.com/rwos/gti https://github.com/rwos/gti As you might guess, it's for git typos and renders a Volkswagen Golf GTI. Amusingly, if your typo is gti push or gti pull it also includes a stick man pushing or pulling the vehicle.

loeg 3y ago

Any new reason to discuss this now? I guess the context is the Jujutsu (jj) git-replacement which has been discussed a couple of times recently. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33726274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33726274 And a bunch of other zero-comment threads.

dang 3y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Ask HN: Is Sapling, the new SCM/DVCS, getting any traction in the wild? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34033040 - Dec 2022 (9 comments) Sapling: A new source control system with Git-compatible client - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612410 - Nov 2022 (525 comments) Eden - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31006003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31006003 - April 2022 (227 comments)

Flux159 3y ago

Have been using Sapling for a year and also used Meta's internal Mercurial fork before that - the interop with Github PRs and familiarity with branchless development is one of the huge benefits of Sapling. Being able to just "sl clone <github_url>" and then use sapling CLI commands is nice, but also Sapling's interactive smartlog in VSCode https://sapling-scm.com/docs/addons/vscode/ https://sapling-scm.com/docs/addons/vscode/ makes it easy to learn commands as well while giving a UI to commit, amend, and move diffs. I think the only thing Sapling's really missing is git-lfs support which would make repos with binary assets easier to manage.

IshKebab 3y ago
Does it only work with GitHub specifically or any git host (e.g. self hosted Gitlab)?
- Shish2k 3y ago
  Any git host, though the integrations for eg “show pull-request code-review status” are configured for github by default
sneed_chucker 3y ago
Btw Metas "internal mercurial fork" has been sapling for a while now. If you work there try typing `hg --version`.

rawrawrawrr 3y ago

Git is to SVN as Sapling is to Git. It's really a great tool, makes version control a lot more productive imo.

reissbaker 3y ago

When I was at Meta, using the custom VCS tooling was pretty great, especially considering the repo size. That being said, for both this and Jujutsu, I feel like without open-sourcing the secret sauce (the super-scalable backend), it's hard to understand why anyone outside of the respective orgs would adopt; it's a not-well-known layer on top of Git, which is: a) Known by almost anyone you're likely to hire or work with, and b) Will have all the same scalability problems with large monorepos regardless of what client you're using. If Sapling and Jujutsu don't solve the scaling problems, and everyone already knows git (and you're still using git under the hood), what's the point? It's nice that it's open-source but to get traction I feel like they need to open-source the backends. I'm sure plenty of mid-sized companies struggling to manage their git repos would be happy to use the Meta/Google solution to the problem, but neither of these projects includes the part where the problem gets solved.

ahahahahah 3y ago
They've actually open sourced almost everything you need. It includes the cli, the virtual filesystem, and the backend. From github: Sapling SCM is comprised of three main components: The Sapling client: The client-side sl command line and web interface for users to interact with Sapling SCM. Mononoke: A highly scalable distributed source control server. (Not yet supported publicly.) EdenFS: A virtual filesystem for efficiently checking out large repositories. (Not yet supported publicly.) And from the mononoke page: Mononoke is still in development. We are making it available now because we plan to start making references to it from our other open source projects. The version that we provide on GitHub is omitting some functions. This is because the code is exported verbatim from an internal repository at Facebook, and not all of the scaffolding from our internal repository can be easily extracted. The key areas where we need to shore things up are: Support for running thrift based apis. Production metadata SQL support (e.g. something like a MySQL backend). We provide sqlite in OSS for now. Production blobstore storage backends (e.g. something like S3). We provide SQL (on sqlite) and File System backends currently in OSS. Linux is Mononoke's primary target plaform with OSS CI also running on MacOS. Other Unix-like OSes may be supported in the future.
- 3y ago

LarsDu88 3y ago

Really would be nice for this monorepo oriented alternative to git to take off. There are many benefits to monorepos when something more scalable than git is used!

loeg 3y ago
You can just scale git in the same way! VFSforGit or whatever.