From 250a28b5a581733d0ea5742d5dbccbd22eddc4ad Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Martin von Zweigbergk Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 22:58:10 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] docs: add a roadmap --- README.md | 4 ++- docs/roadmap.md | 91 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 94 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 docs/roadmap.md diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index e6bad6b700..7075ff83b7 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -11,11 +11,13 @@ **[Homepage]   •  ** **[Installation]   •  ** -**[Getting Started]** +**[Getting Started]   •  ** +**[Roadmap]** [Homepage]: https://martinvonz.github.io/jj [Installation]: https://martinvonz.github.io/jj/latest/install-and-setup [Getting Started]: https://martinvonz.github.io/jj/latest/tutorial +[Roadmap]: https://martinvonz.github.io/jj/latest/roadmap diff --git a/docs/roadmap.md b/docs/roadmap.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..0ce90b88d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/roadmap.md @@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ +# Roadmap + +This documents some of the goals we have. Many of them are quite independent. + +> **Note:** Most people contributing to Jujutsu do so in their spare time, which +> means that we cannot attach any target dates to any of the goals below. + +## Support for copies and renames + +We want to support copy tracing in a way that leaves it up to the commit backend +to either record or detect copies. That should let us work with existing Git +repos (Git does not record copies, it detects them on the fly) as well as with +very large repos where detection would be too slow. See +[design doc][copy-design-doc]. + +## Forge integrations + +We would like to make it easier to work with various popular forges by providing +something like `jj github submit`, `jj gitlab submit`, and `jj gerrit send`. For +popular forges, we might include that support by default in the standard `jj` +binary. + +## Submodule support + +Git submodules are used frequently enough in large Git repos that we will +probably need to [support them][submodules]. There are still big open +questions around UX. + +## Better Rust API for UIs + +UIs like [gg] currently have to duplicate quite a bit of logic from `jj-cli`. We +need to make this code not specific to the CLI (e.g. return status objects +instead of printing messages) and move it into `jj-lib`. + +## RPC API + +One problem with writing tools using the Rust API is that they will only work +with the backends they were compiled with. For example, a regular [gg] build +will not work on Google repos because it doesn't have the backends necessary to +load them. We want to provide an RPC API for tools that want to work with an +unknown build of `jj` by having the tool run something like `jj api` to give it +an address to talk to. + +In addition to helping with the problem of unknown backends, having an RPC API +should make it easier for tools like VS Code that are not written in Rust. The +RPC API will probably be at a higher abstraction level than the Rust API. + +See [design doc][api-design-doc]. + +## Open-source cloud-based repos (server and daemon process) + +Google has an internal Jujutsu server backed by a database. This server allows +commits and repos (operation logs) to be stored in the cloud (i.e. the database). +Working copies can still be stored locally. + +In order to reduce latency, there is a local daemon process that caches reads +and writes. It also prefetches of objects it thinks the client might as for +next. In also helps with write latency by optimistically answering write +requests (it therefore needs to know the server's hashing scheme so it can +return the right IDs). + +We (the project, not necessarily Google) want to provide a similar experience +for all users. We would therefore like to create a similar server and daemon. +The daemon might be the same process as for the RPC API mentioned above. + +## Virtual file system (VFS) + +For very large projects and/or large files, it can be expensive to update the +working copy. We want to provide a VFS to help with that. Updating the working +copy to another commit can then be done simply by telling the VFS to use the +other commit as base, without needing to download any large files in the target +commit until the user asks for them via the file system. A VFS can also make it +cheap to snapshot the working copy by keeping track of all changes compared to +the base commit. + +Having a VFS can also be very benefial for [`jj run`][jj-run], since we can then +cheaply create temporary working copies for the commands to run in. + +## Better support for large files + +We have talked about somehow using content-defined chunking (CDC) to reduce +storage and transfer costs for large files. Maybe we will store files in our +future cloud-based server using the same model as [XetHub][xet-storage]. + + +[api-design-doc]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rOKvutee5TVYpFhh_UDNZDxfUKyrJ8rjCNpFaNHOHwU/edit?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-922ApyoAjuXN_uTKqmCqjg +[copy-design-doc]: design/copy-tracking.md +[gg]: https://github.com/gulbanana/gg +[jj-run]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/issues/1869 +[submodules]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/issues/494 +[xet-storage]: https://xethub.com/assets/docs/concepts/xet-storage