jj tug

I really like working with jj, and I wouldn’t want to go back to pure git. In jj, the tip of your branch doesn’t follow new commits automatically. That means you’re often in situations like this, where you want to move your bookmark to the latest change:

› jj log
@  pytqprxw [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:04:59 7791efad
│  (no description set)
○  rxnmpktx [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:02:51 git_head() 9033f455
│  notes: Add jj-tug
◆  lvosywup [email protected] 2025-01-07 13:07:52 master 524578da
│  notes: Add grafana-ta
~

For the record, I like this part. I like that you have to consciously think about where you want your branches to point to. However, sometimes branch names are annoying to remember, especially when they’re generated by jj in the first place. I always have to copy the branch name by hand from the log when I want to do something like jj b move push-qlonwoskvtmu --to @- to make it point to my latest change.

Then today I came across the jj tug alias in the jj discord (also mentioned here and in jj b move --help).

Now I just do

› jj tug
Moved 1 bookmarks to rxnmpktx 166780f0 master* | notes: Add jj-tug
› jj log
@  szlurtow [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:25:43 4a6f774e
│  (empty) (no description set)
○  rxnmpktx [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:25:43 master* git_head() 166780f0
│  notes: Add jj-tug
◆  lvosywup [email protected] 2025-01-07 13:07:52 master@origin 524578da
│  notes: Add grafana-ta
~

It’s an alias you can set to do this process automatically, and it looks like this:

tug = ["bookmark", "move", "--from", "heads(::@- & bookmarks())", "--to", "@-"]

Or, if you’re using home-manager on nix:

programs.jujutsu.settings.aliases.tug = ["bookmark" "move" "--from" "heads(::@- & bookmarks())" "--to" "@-"];

The alias will take the closest ancestor bookmark¹ and move them the current change.

Or to break it down, ::@- refers to ancestors of the parent change, bookmarks() refers to all changes with bookmarks, and heads() instructs to only take the latest change².

So if I’ve got this history:

› jj log
@  oxvmymql [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:20:24 a475954f
│  (no description set)
○  xkqnuqvl [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:19:02 bookmark2 git_head() ddf702f7
│  (empty) (no description set)
○  pytqprxw [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:18:48 bookmark1 436efad8
│  (no description set)

It will only move the bookmark2 bookmark:

› jj log -r 'heads(::@ & bookmarks())'
○  xkqnuqvl [email protected] 2025-01-07 17:19:02 bookmark2 git_head() ddf702f7
│  (empty) (no description set)
~

So I think this alias will make my life a lot easier and is a good reminder to invest in useful aliases more and that I need to mess more with the revset language. And if things go wrong, jj undo is always an option, so there’s nothing to fear!

Also, props to the jj team for putting such a useful command in the help docs so people actually stumble over it!