Solving Git's Pain Points with Jujutsu (with Martin von Zweigbergk)

About this episode

The episode discusses Jujutsu, a Git-compatible version control system that addresses Git's pain points.

Git might be the most ubiquitous tool in software development, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. What if we could keep Git compatibility while fixing its most frustrating aspects—painful merges, scary rebases, being stuck in conflict states, and the confusing staging area? This week we're joined by Martin von Zweigbergk, creator of Jujutsu (JJ), a Git-compatible version control system that takes a fundamentally different approach. Starting from a simple idea—automatically snapshotting your working copy—Martin has built a tool that reimagines how we interact with version control. We explore the clever algebra behind Jujutsu's conflict handling that lets you store conflicts as commits and move freely through your repository even when things are broken. We discuss why there's no staging area, how the operation log gives you powerful undo/redo capabilities, and why rebasing becomes trivially easy when you can edit any commit in your history and have changes automatically propagate forward. Whether you're a Git power user frustrated by interactive rebases, someone who's lost work to a botched merge, or just curious about how version control could work differently, this conversation…

People in this episode

Host: Kris Jenkins

Guest: Martin von Zweigbergk

Topics covered

• Git
• version control
• software development
• conflict handling
• merges
• rebases

Keywords

• Git
• Jujutsu
• version control
• merges
• rebases
• conflict handling
• software development

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Jujutsu

Books & works: Git

More episodes of Developer Voices

• What's Worth Knowing In AI Right Now? (with Henry Garner) · March 26, 2026 · 1h 40m
• Asciinema: Terminal Recording Done Right (with Marcin Kulik) · February 19, 2026 · 1h 27m
• Building the SpacetimeDB Database, Game-First (with Tyler Cloutier) · February 4, 2026 · 1h 41m
• Will Turso Be The Better SQLite? (with Glauber Costa) · December 11, 2025 · 1h 51m
• Can Google's ADK Replace LangChain and MCP? (with Christina Lin) · November 20, 2025 · 1h 5m
• Building Observable Systems with eBPF and Linux (with Mohammed Aboullaite) · October 31, 2025 · 1h 11m