The future of version control

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

CRDTs as a basis for version control

  • Many commenters like the idea of CRDT-based VCS and “weave”-style storage, noting prior systems (SCCS, Codeville, Darcs, Pijul) explored related ideas.
  • Others stress “CRDT” is a framework, not a single algorithm; trivial CRDTs like last‑write‑wins would be useless for code.
  • Several point out CRDTs guarantee convergence but not semantic correctness; they solve system-level conflicts, not intent-level ones.

Merges, conflicts, and UX

  • Many see current Git conflict UX (“ours/theirs”, opaque markers, blocking merges) as a real pain point.
  • The proposed “merges never fail, conflicts are just annotations” idea is compared to Jujutsu and Pijul, which store conflicts as first-class and allow deferring resolution.
  • Supporters say this avoids getting stuck mid-rebase and prevents re-resolving the same conflict; skeptics worry it just pushes broken code downstream.
  • Multiple people note Git already has better conflict styles (diff3/zdiff3) and powerful 3/4‑pane merge tools; they argue the core issue is tooling/UX, not Git’s data model.

Comparison to existing alternatives

  • Pijul is repeatedly raised as an existing CRDT-ish VCS with patch theory and easier cherry-picking/rebasing, but some report reliability and documentation issues.
  • Jujutsu is praised for history-preserving rebases, first-class conflicts, and easy Git interop; several say it already solves many of the problems described.
  • Some argue any new VCS must layer over or interoperate with Git due to network effects and tooling.

Scalability, binaries, and semantics

  • Several comments say merge conflicts are not the main pain; large monorepos, performance, and non-text assets (games, ML, design files) are.
  • Git LFS is seen as inadequate; alternative systems (e.g., dataset‑oriented tools, semantic/binary-aware layers) are mentioned.
  • There is strong interest in syntax/AST-aware or graph-based diffs and merges (tree-sitter-based tools, semantic diffs) as a more promising “future of VCS” than purely text/line-based CRDTs.

AI and the future

  • Some claim AI agents already make merge conflicts much less painful (LLMs resolving conflicts or full rebases).
  • Others report poor AI performance on complex rebases and see more value in preserving reasoning/intent alongside code than in swapping out Git.

Overall sentiment

  • Many welcome experimentation and the compact prototype, but view it as an interesting demo rather than a proven “future of version control.”
  • A substantial contingent believes version control’s foundations are basically sound; improvements should focus on UX, semantics, and scale rather than replacing Git’s core model.