> Anonymous branches? How do I get back to my work?

I fully appreciate this question, as I was there too until I started working with anonymous branches.

Here's some sample output from jj log:

$ jj log --limit 5
@ pzoqtwuv steve@steveklabnik.com 2024-03-01 15:06:59.000 -06:00 9353442b
│ added some cool new feature
│ ◉ xrslwzvq steve@steveklabnik.com 2024-02-29 23:06:23.000 -06:00 a70d464c
├─╯ create hello and goodbye functions
│ ◉ yykpmnuq steve@steveklabnik.com 2024-02-29 23:03:22.000 -06:00 210283e8
├─╯ add better documentation
◉ ootnlvpt steve@steveklabnik.com 2024-02-28 23:26:44.000 -06:00 b5db7940
│ only print hello world
◉ nmptruqn steve@steveklabnik.com 2024-02-28 23:09:11.000 -06:00 90a2e97f
│ refactor printing

Here, we are working on change 'pzoqtwuv'. (@ means the working copy.) There are colors in the real CLI to make the differences more obvious, and to show you unique prefixes, so for example, you probably only need 'p' or 'pz' instead of 'pzoqtwuv' to uniquely identify the change. I'll use the full IDs since there's no syntax highlighting here.

We have two anonymous branches here. They have the change IDs of 'xrslwzvq' and 'yykpmnuq'. The log output shows the summary line of their messages, so we can see "create hello and goodbye functions" on one branch, and "add better documentation" on the other.

You don't need an additional branch name: the change ID is already there. If you want to add even more better documentation, 'jj new yykpmnuq' (or again, likely 'jj new yy' in practice) and you're off to the races. (jj new makes a new change off of the parent you specify.)

That's all there is to it. We already have the commit messages and IDs, giving an additional identifier doesn't help that much.

(And if you're in a larger repo with more outstanding branches, you can ask 'jj log' to show specific subsets of commits. It has a powerful DSL that lets you do so. For example, say you only want to see your commits, 'jj log -r 'mine()'' can do that for you.)

> Auto commit of saved files? How do I commit the things I want without leaving all sorts of junk I don’t wanna share in my history?

The simplest answer is "you put that stuff in your .gitignore and it never gets committed." That said, it is recognized that sometimes that is not possible or easy. See https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/issues/323 for the current discussion about how to maybe support alternatives here.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917149

> I have no impression of how this makes anything easier.

My take on this is that jj has fewer but also more orthogonal concepts. Naming things is hard. I don't like to do it. Not needing to name branches is really nice, as I don't really lose anything by not naming them, and I no longer have to name them.

With regards to some other stuff, the "auto commit of saved files" really means that jj turns two of git's concepts, commits and the index, into one concept: commits. How is that easier? Well, I don't need to learn two sets of tools for dealing with the index vs a commit. For example, git has two kinds of resets: hard and soft. This is because git needs to have two sets of behaviors to deal with both concepts here, as git reset is about changing the index but maybe or maybe not the working tree. All of these distinctions don't matter in jj, because it's all just commits, so you use regular old tools on commits for them.