jj-vine

A tool for submitting stacked Pull/Merge Requests from Jujutsu bookmarks.

Supports the following code forges:

• GitLab (gitlab.com or self-hosted)
• GitHub or GitHub Enterprise
• Forgejo / Codeberg / Gitea
• Azure DevOps

The canonical location for jj-vine is codeberg.org/abrenneke/jj-vine. GitHub is used as a mirror and CI only.

Table of Contents

• Overview

• Main Features

• Planned Features

• Installation

  • Cargo Binstall
  • Mise
  • Pre-built Binaries
  • Attestations
  • Alias Setup

• Quick Start

• Commands

  • submit
  • init
  • status

• Configuration

  • Forge-Specific Settings

    • Forge
    • GitLab
    • GitHub
    • Forgejo/Codeberg/Gitea
    • Azure DevOps

  • Common Settings

• Description Generation / Stack Visualization

  • Configuration
  • Linear Format
  • Tree Format
  • Initial Description Generation

• Credits

• FAQs

  • Is this vibe-coded slop?
  • Ok, but really?
  • Why a new project?

• Contributing

• License

Overview

As jj is so flexible, it can sometimes be tedious to manage pull/merge requests for a jj repository. Additionally, many people like the "stacked pull/merge request" workflow, where a tool can manage your stack of pull/merge requests for you, including modifying the base branch, description, and other settings. jj-vine aims to smooth out the process of managing pull/merge requests for a jj repository.

There are several tools these days that aim to solve this problem, most notably jj-spr and jj-stack. jj-vine has its own design choices, and may not be a direct replacement for these tools. Take a look at the differences & features below to see if jj-vine is a good fit for you.

Major differences:

• jj-vine is bookmark-based, rather than change-based. It expects you to create your bookmarks before submitting them, and (usually) expects you to push them (e.g. jj git push -c @) as well. This means that you can have multiple commits in each pull/merge request.
• jj-spr aims to more be a full workflow rather than a lightweight tool. jj-vine is less opinionated.
• jj-vine is primarily based around the submit --tracked command. This submits all (your) tracked bookmarks at once. Other tools often require you to submit each bookmark individually. The idea is to simply "sync your current state to the code forge".
• Bookmarks are not automatically forwarded. You'll need to use jj bookmark set to update the target of a bookmark.

Main Features

• Stacked pull/merge request creation

  Automatically creates pull/merge requests with correct base branches based on bookmark dependencies. Works great for single branches as well.

• Stack visualization

  Adds a navigable stack diagram to pull/merge request descriptions with links to related pull/merge requests. Can be customized and disabled.

• Unopinionated

  jj-vine is not opinionated about how you should structure your commits, bookmarks, and pull/merge requests. It can work with what you have. It also works great with auto-generated bookmarks (jj git push -c <rev>).

• Complex branching

  Not only does jj-vine support trees of bookmarks, but it fully supports complex (DAG) graphs of changes just like jj itself does. While actual forge support for PRs/MRs with multiple parents may be limited, jj-vine can still visualize and manage them.

• Status

  Can easily report the status of your bookmarks and their pull/merge requests.

• Automatic syncing

  Updates pull/merge request base branches & all related descriptions when stack structure changes.

Planned Features

• Automatic rebasing

  Once a pull/merge request is merged, rebases the stack on top of the trunk

• Landing

  Merge a pull/merge request and automatically rebase dependent pull/merge requests on top of the trunk

Installation

Cargo Binstall

The preferred way to install jj-vine is to use cargo-binstall:

# Will put the binary in $HOME/.cargo/bin
cargo binstall jj-vine

Mise

If you use mise, you can install with:

mise use -g cargo:jj-vine

Pre-built Binaries

Pre-built binaries are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows (ARM64 and x86_64 for all). You can download directly from the releases page.

Attestations

Binaries are built with GitHub attestations. You may verify the provenance of a binary by running:

gh attestation verify <binary> -R abrenneke/jj-vine

Alias Setup

You can set up a jj alias to make it easier to use jj-vine. Aliases that work great are jj pr, jj mr, or jj vine. You can run the following command to install an alias:

# Take your pick:
jj config set --user aliases.pr '["util", "exec", "--", "jj-vine"]'
jj config set --user aliases.mr '["util", "exec", "--", "jj-vine"]'
jj config set --user aliases.vine '["util", "exec", "--", "jj-vine"]'

Quick Start

1. Run jj-vine init to set up your code forge configuration for your repository. This is stored in .jj/repo/config.toml. You may also move any configuration settings to the global config file ~/.config/jj/config.toml.

   jj-vine init
   

2. Push up some bookmarks (auto-generated bookmarks work great!)

   jj new main
   
   jj commit -m "Add feature A"
   # Make some changes
   jj git push -c @-
   
   jj commit -m "Add feature B"
   # Make some changes
   jj git push -c @-
   

3. Submit all tracked bookmarks at once:

   jj-vine submit --tracked
   

   This creates two pull/merge requests:

   • feature-a targeting main
   • feature-b targeting feature-a

Commands

submit

Submit a bookmark and its dependencies as pull/merge requests.

# Submit a single bookmark or revset (and its dependencies!)
jj-vine submit <revset/bookmark>
jj-vine submit -r <revset/bookmark>

# Submit all tracked bookmarks. Roughly equivalent to `(mine() & tracked_remote_bookmarks()) ~ trunk()`, but has additional stipulations. See `jj-vine submit --help` for more details.
# This is the recommended command to use!
jj-vine submit --tracked

# Preview without making changes
jj-vine submit <options> --dry-run

See all options and additional help with jj-vine submit --help.

init

Interactive setup wizard to configure jj-vine for your repository.

jj-vine init

status

Show the status of tracked bookmarks and their pull/merge requests.

# Show the status of all my bookmarks
jj-vine status

# Show the status of all tracked bookmarks
jj-vine status --tracked

# Show the status of a specific revset that includes bookmarks
jj-vine status -r <revset>

The output will look roughly like this (but with colors):

!100 "This is the title of the first merge request"
     push-xxxxxxxa • ✓ Checks OK • Needs approval (0/1) • 2 open discussions • 24d 21h old • https://forge-url.example/100

!101 "This is the title of the second merge request"
     push-xxxxxxxb • [READY] • ✓ Checks OK • Approved (1/1) • 16d 18h old • https://forge-url.example/101

!102 "Third title"
     push-xxxxxxxc • ✓ Checks OK • Needs approval (0/1) • 5d 6h old • https://forge-url.example/102

!103 "Fourth merge request title"
     push-xxxxxxxd • ✓ Checks OK • Needs approval (0/1) • 19h old • https://forge-url.example/103

!104 "Fifth title"
     push-xxxxxxxe • ✗ Checks failing • Needs approval (0/1) • 1 open discussion • 19h old • https://forge-url.example/104

wip No merge request

wip-2 No merge request

See all options and additional help with jj-vine status --help.

Configuration

Configuration is stored in jj's configuration system under the jj-vine section. You can use jj config edit --repo to edit the configuration for a specific repository or jj config edit --user to edit the global configuration. You can also use jj config set --repo <key> <value> to set a configuration value for a specific repository:

jj config set --repo jj-vine.deleteSourceBranch true
jj config set --repo jj-vine.defaultReviewers '["alice", "bob"]'

Forge-Specific Settings

All listed settings are under the jj-vine section so should be prefixed with jj-vine..

Forge

Ad a minimum, the jj-vine.forge configuration setting must be set to the type of forge you are using.

GitLab

Required when jj-vine.forge is set to gitlab.

GitHub

Required when jj-vine.forge is set to github.

Forgejo/Codeberg/Gitea

Required when jj-vine.forge is set to forgejo.

Azure DevOps

Required when jj-vine.forge is set to azure.

Common Settings

These settings apply to all forges:

Description Generation / Stack Visualization

jj-vine can generate stack diagrams for pull/merge requests and add them to the descriptions of pull/merge requests. When enabled, every time you submit your bookmark(s), the descriptions for all impacted pull/merge requests will be updated as well.

Configuration

The following sections show examples of the different stack formats.

Linear Format

Linear/Single Bookmark Stack

(description.format.single = "linear" and description.format.linear = "linear")

This PR is part of a stack containing 5 PRs:

1. main
2. #1 "Feature A"
3. "Feature B" (this PR)
4. #3 "Feature C"
5. #4 "Feature D"
6. #5 "Feature E"

Tree Bookmarks

(description.format.tree = "linear")

This PR is part of a tree containing 8 PRs:

1. main
2. #1 "Feature A" → main
3. #4 "Feature D" → #1
4. #2 "Feature B" → #1
5. "Feature E" (this PR) → #2
6. #3 "Feature C" → #2
7. #7 "Feature G" → #3
8. #8 "Feature H" → #7
9. #6 "Feature F" → #3

Complex Graph of Bookmarks

(description.format.complex = "linear")

This PR is part of a complex set of PRs containing 10 PRs:

1. main
2. #9 "Feature I" → main
3. #10 "Feature J" → #9
4. #1 "Feature A" → main
5. #2 "Feature B" → #1
6. "Feature E" (this PR) → #2, #10
7. #4 "Feature D" → #1, #2
8. #3 "Feature C" → #2
9. #7 "Feature G" → #3, #5, #10
10. #8 "Feature H" → #7
11. #6 "Feature F" → #3, #9

Tree Format

Linear/Single Bookmark Stack

(description.format.single = "tree" and description.format.linear = "tree")

This PR is part of a stack containing 5 PRs:

• main

  • #1 "Feature A"

    • "Feature B" (this PR)

      • #3 "Feature C"

        • #4 "Feature D"

          • #5 "Feature E"

Tree of Bookmarks

(description.format.tree = "tree")

This PR is part of a tree containing 8 PRs:

• main

  • #1 "Feature A"

    1. #2 "Feature B"

       1. #3 "Feature C"

          1. #7 "Feature G"

             • #8 "Feature H"

          2. #6 "Feature F"

       2. "Feature E" (this PR)

    2. #4 "Feature D"

Complex Graph of Bookmarks

(description.format.complex = "tree")

This PR is part of a complex set of PRs containing 10 PRs:

• main

  1. #9 "Feature I"

     1. #10 "Feature J"

        1. #7 "Feature G" (→ #3, #5 also)

           • #8 "Feature H"

        2. "Feature E" (this PR) (→ #2 also)

           • #7 "Feature G" (→ #3, #10 also)

             • #8 "Feature H"

     2. #6 "Feature F" (→ #3 also)

  2. #1 "Feature A"

     1. #2 "Feature B"

        1. "Feature E" (this PR) (→ #10 also)

           • #7 "Feature G" (→ #3, #10 also)

             • #8 "Feature H"

        2. #3 "Feature C"

           1. #7 "Feature G" (→ #5, #10 also)

              • #8 "Feature H"

           2. #6 "Feature F" (→ #9 also)

        3. #4 "Feature D" (→ #1 also)

     2. #4 "Feature D" (→ #2 also)

Initial Description Generation

jj-vine can generate an initial description for a pull/merge request when it is created. Note that this description will not be updated automatically if changes are made later (in case you want to remove it entirely, or change it, etc).

You can configure how the initial description is generated by setting the description.initialSingleRevision and description.initialMultipleRevisions settings. initialSingleRevision is used when there is only one revision in the pull/merge request, and initialMultipleRevisions is used when there are multiple revisions in the pull/merge request.

If jj-vine.description.enabled is false, the initial description will not be generated.

The following options are available:

none

Do not generate an initial description in this situation.

notFirstLine

Take the commit message of the head commit in the branch, trim the first line, and use the rest as the initial description. This is the default behavior for when there is only one revision in the pull/merge request (because the title of the PR/MR uses the first line of the commit message).

fullMessage

Use the full commit message of the head commit in the branch as the initial description.

commitListFirstLine

Generate a list of all commits in the branch, with their hashes and the first line of each commit message. For example:

• xxxxxxxa Head Commit Message
• xxxxxxxb Parent 1 Message
• xxxxxxxc Parent 2 Message

commitListFull

Generate a list of all commits in the branch, with their hashes and the full commit messages. This is the default behavior for when there are multiple revisions in the pull/merge request (because the title of the PR/MR uses the bookmark name). For example:

• xxxxxxxa Head Commit Message
  Message line 2
  Message line 3
• xxxxxxxb Parent 1 Message
  Message line 2
  
  Message line 3
  Message line 4
• xxxxxxxc Parent 2 Message
  Message line 2
  Message line 3

Credits

• jj-spr heavily for inspiration & code approaches
• jj-stack heavily for inspiration & code approaches

FAQs

Is this vibe-coded slop?

Don't worry, I berated Claude with profanity until things looked good.

Ok, but really?

Nah. It may have started out as a test to see how well Claude Code was (conclusion: meh not great), but large swathes of the code has been rewritten by hand at this point. AI-generated code is so verbose and inelegant at times, often 2x the size of the hand-written code that uses Rust best practices. I'm not against AI coding, nor think it will replace developers. Be measured, people.

There are a decent amount of tests, but there could always be more.

Why a new project?

Well primarily, existing tools did not support GitLab (though jj-vine now supports GitLab, GitHub, Forgejo, and Azure DevOps). jj-spr was too heavy-handed - it imposes a strict "one pull request per commit" workflow. jj-stack was in TypeScript (nothing against it, but seems sane for a jj tool to also be built in Rust). My current jj workflow was also just different enough that those existing tools did not fit my needs.

Contributing

All contributions extremely welcome! Please feel free to open an issue or pull request. See CONTRIBUTING.djot for more details.

License

MIT License