> For someone new to version control, committing to an unnamed branch doesn't seem like a desired operation no matter which system you're using.

We have data on this! I can't cite anything public, but companies like Meta have to train people who are used to git to use tools like sapling, which does not require named branches. In my understanding, at first, people tend to name their branches, but because they don't have to, they quickly end up moving towards not naming.

> What's wrong with requiring branches to be named?

Because it's not necessary. It's an extra step that doesn't bring any real benefits, so why bother?

Now, in some cases, a name is useful. For example, knowing which branch is trunk. But for normal development and submitting changes? It's just extra work to name the branch, and it's going to go away anyway.

▲ fragmede 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Fascinating. The benefit it brings is you can map the branch to its name. Of the, say, 10 branches you've got checked out, how do you know which branch maps to jira-123 and which one maps to jira-234, or if you're using names, which anonymous branch maps to addFeatureA or fixBugB?

More to the point though, what tooling is there on top of raw jj/git? Specifically, there's a jira cli (well, multiple) as well as a gh cli for github as well as gitlab has one as well. When you call the script that submits the branch to jira/github/gitlab, how does it get the ticket name to submit the code to the system under? Hopefully no one's actually opening up jira/github/gitlab by hand and having to click a bunch of buttons! So I'll be totally transparent about my bias here in that my tooling relies on the branch being named jira-123 so it submits it to jira and github from the command line and uses the branch name as part of the automated PR creation and jira ticket modification.

▲ steveklabnik 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Of the, say, 10 branches you've got checked out, how do you know which branch maps to jira-123 and which one maps to jira-234, or if you're using names, which anonymous branch maps to addFeatureA or fixBugB?

The descriptions of the changes. I shared some jj log output in another comment, here it is with more realistic messages, taken from a project of mine:

    @  vvxvznow 
    │  (empty) (no description set)
    │ ○  uuowqquz 
    ├─╯  Fix compiler panic in error rendering for anonymous struct methods (rue-fwi9)
    │ ○  uvlpytpm 
    ├─╯  Stabilize anonymous struct methods feature
    ◆  lwywpyls trunk
    │  Fix array return type unification in type inference

That (rue-fwi9) is the equivalent of jira-123, if I super care about it being obvious, I might put it in the message. But also, I might not, as you can see with the other two. You could also pass flags to see more verbose output, if the first line isn't clear enough, but in general, the convention for git as well is to have that short summary that explains your change, so if it's confusing, you probably need to do better on that.

> Specifically, there's a jira cli (well, multiple) as well as a gh cli for github as well as gitlab has one as well.

These systems do require branches in order to open a pull request. In these cases, I use `jj git push -c <change id>`, which will create a branch name for me, and push it up. This is configured to produce a branch name like steveklabnik/push-mrzwmwmvkowx for a change with the id mrzwmwmv, and ultimately, it's still easier to name locally with m or mr depending on if the prefix is ambiguous. That said, from there I do usually just click the button and then "open pull request" on GitHub, but like, all of these tools (gh is the only one I've used, but I can't imagine that the others do not work, since ultimately, it's a git repo) just work if you want to use them.

Other systems do not even require a branch to submit, and so you don't even need to do this. I would say "submit mr" and it would return me the URL for the created change request. Gerrit does this on top of plain old git.

> how does it get the ticket name to submit the code to the system under?

I haven't worked with Jira in a long time, but with GitHub, if I make a change that fixes issue 5, I put "Fixes #5" in my description, and when the PR is created, it updates ticket #5 to link the PR to that change automatically, no other process needed.

▲ Zizizizz 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can name branches in JJ too, they're just called bookmarks.

git checkout main git pull git switch -c jira-234 ... git commit git push -u origin main

jj git fetch jj new main ... jj commit jj b(ookmark) c(reate) jira-234 -r @- jj b(ookmark) t(rack) jira-234@origin jj git push

	▲	steveklabnik 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right, this is a good point: you can if you want to, or if you're working with a system that requires them. Just in practice, anonymous branches end up feeling very natural, especially during development, and especially if your code review tooling doesn't require names.