jj-diffedit(1)

💖 jj-diffedit — the manual page, but make it a group chat 💖

okay so. bestie. this is jj-diffedit(1), from the General Commands Manual section of your friendly neighbourhood Jujutsu docs. it's the command that lets you touch up the content changes in a revision with a diff editor. yes. we're doing surgery. with vibes. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

jj-diffedit — touch up the content changes in a revision with a diff editor 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

jj diffedit [-r|--revision] [-R|--repository] [-f|--from]
[--ignore-working-copy] [--no-integrate-operation] [-t|--to]
[--ignore-immutable] [--tool] [--at-operation] [--restore-descendants]
[--debug] [--color] [--quiet] [--no-pager] [--config] [--config-file]
[-h|--help] [FILESETS]

like. look at her. so many flags. she's serving ✨

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

Touch up the content changes in a revision with a diff editor 💅

• with the -r option: it starts a [diff editor] on the changes in the revision. periodt.
• with the --from and/or --to options: it starts a [diff editor] comparing the "from" revision to the "to" revision. 😌

[diff editor]: https://docs.jj-vcs.dev/latest/config/#editing-diffs

okay so here's the ritual fr fr: you edit the right side of the diff until it looks exactly the way you want it to look 🫶. once you close the editor, the revision you specified with -r or --to gets updated. and unless you pass --restore-descendants, the descendants get rebased on top as usual, which may result in conflicts 😭. noted. warned. it's giving consequences.

if you wanna move entire files from one revision to another, that's not this — go see jj restore 🧚. and if you wanna move changes between revisions, that's jj squash -i 🌈.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -r, --revision <REVSET> — the revision you're touching up 💖. defaults to @ if neither --to nor --from are specified.
• -f, --from <REVSET> — show changes from this revision 👀. defaults to @ if --to is specified.
• -t, --to <REVSET> — edit changes in this revision 🎀. defaults to @ if --from is specified.
• --tool <NAME> — specify the diff editor to be used 🛠️✨
• --restore-descendants — preserve the content (not the diff) when rebasing descendants 💫

okay so when you rebase a descendant on top of the rewritten revision, normally its diff compared to its parent(s) is preserved — that's just how descendants always get rebased, iykyk. this flag flips it: the content/state gets preserved instead of the diff. no cap. 🧠

• -h, --help — print help (see a summary with -h) 🙈
• [FILESETS] — edit only these paths (unmatched paths will remain unchanged) 🍓

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🌈 GLOBAL OPTIONS 🌈

these are the ones that apply all over the place. main character options, honestly 💅

• -R, --repository <REPOSITORY> — path to the repository to operate on 📁

by default, Jujutsu searches for the closest .jj/ directory in an ancestor of the current working directory. it's literally hunting. 🔍

• --ignore-working-copy — don't snapshot the working copy, and don't update it 🙅♀️

by default, Jujutsu snapshots the working copy at the beginning of every command. the working copy also gets updated at the end of the command, if the command modified the working-copy commit (@). if you wanna avoid snapshotting the working copy and instead see a possibly stale working-copy commit, you can use --ignore-working-copy. this may be useful e.g. in a command prompt, especially if you have another process that commits the working copy 👀

loading the repository at a specific operation with --at-operation implies --ignore-working-copy. they're a package deal 🫶

• --no-integrate-operation — run the command as usual but don't integrate any operations 🚫

when this option is given, the operations will still be created as usual but they will not be integrated to the operation log. the working copy will also not be updated. ✨

the command will print the resulting operation ID. you can pass that to e.g. jj --at-op to inspect the resulting repo state, or you can pass it to jj op restore to restore the repo to that state. you can also pass the ID to jj op integrate to integrate the operation. so many doors opened. 🔥

note that this does not prevent side effects outside the repo. for example, jj git push --no-integrate-operation will still perform the push. 💀 yeah. it still pushes. be aware.

• --ignore-immutable — allow rewriting immutable commits 😳

by default, Jujutsu prevents rewriting commits in the configured set of immutable commits. this option disables that check and lets you rewrite any commit but the root commit. rules? we're ignoring them. (mostly.) 👑

this option only affects the check. it does not affect the immutable_heads() revset or the immutable template keyword. those stay exactly as they are, bestie. ✋

• --at-operation <AT_OPERATION> — operation to load the repo at ⏳

operation to load the repo at. by default, Jujutsu loads the repo at the most recent operation, or at the merge of the divergent operations if any.

you can use --at-op=<operation ID> to see what the repo looked like at an earlier operation. for example jj --at-op=<operation ID> st will show you what jj st would have shown you when the given operation had just finished. --at-op=@ is pretty much the same as the default except that divergent operations will never be merged. 🌀

use jj op log to find the operation ID you want. any unambiguous prefix of the operation ID is enough. 🎯

when loading the repo at an earlier operation, the working copy will be ignored, as if --ignore-working-copy had been specified. 🚫

it is possible to run mutating commands when loading the repo at an earlier operation. doing that is equivalent to having run concurrent commands starting at the earlier operation. there's rarely a reason to do that, but it is possible. 🫠

• --debug — enable debug logging 🐛
• --color <WHEN> — when to colorize output 🌈

possible values:

• always
• never
• debug
• auto

• --quiet — silence non-primary command output 🤫

for example, jj file list will still list files, but it won't tell you if the working copy was snapshotted or if descendants were rebased. the essentials stay. the commentary dips. 💅

warnings and errors will still be printed. those don't get quiet. 🙈

• --no-pager — disable the pager 📄
• --config <NAME=VALUE> — additional configuration options (can be repeated) ⚙️

the name should be specified as TOML dotted keys. the value should be specified as a TOML expression. if the string value isn't enclosed by any TOML constructs (such as array notation), quotes can be omitted. 🎀

• --config-file <PATH> — additional configuration files (can be repeated) 📂

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and that's the whole page, babe 🫶 that was diffedit as the left footer and jj-diffedit(1) as the right footer — the exact little sign-off this manual ships with — handcrafted with love, no cap 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅