hgit-native

hgit for Windows, macOS and Linux — a native port of the TempleOS version-control system: persistent file identity, truthful non-destructive history, typed relations between commits, and a rename-aware three-way merge. One executable, no VM.

Install · Commands · vs. Git · Storage/exchange (experimental) · Architecture · Status · ADRs

Status: v1.9.0 is released. go build ./cmd/hgit builds a working binary, and the full command-line regression against real TempleOS output passes end to end. GitHub Releases carries pre-built Windows/macOS/Linux binaries, built and attested by a reproducible CI pipeline (.github/workflows/release.yml - two independent builds of the same commit verified to produce byte-identical archives before this claim was made). choco install hgit-native is approved on the Chocolatey community feed. No Homebrew formula or apt package yet. docs/STATUS.md says exactly what exists today.

What this is

hgit is a version-control system written in HolyC that runs inside TempleOS. It works, and it is verified on real TempleOS under QEMU, but reaching it means running a TempleOS VM. hgit-native is the same tool, ported to Go, for ordinary machines:

• the same .hgs repository format, so a repo made by either implementation opens in the other;
• the same commands and semantics, as normal subcommands with flags and --help instead of Hgit("...") calls;
• parity checked against golden fixtures produced on real TempleOS, not assumed.

It is not a drop-in Git replacement: repos are .hgs archives, there are no remotes (sharing is export / import), and it cannot open Git repos or talk to GitHub.

The commands

Full parity with hgit 1.8.9:

Command	What it does
init	Create a new, empty repository
offer	Snapshot matching files as a new commit (hgit's word for git's "commit"), honoring .hgitignore
offertree / statustree	The same, recursing into subdirectories
status	Compare the working directory against HEAD: new, modified, deleted, and renamed
merge	A rename-aware three-way merge between two named paths; real conflicts persist as repository data
conflicts / resolve / merge continue / merge abort	The conflict lifecycle
history / graph	Walk one path's commits, or the whole history across every path
see / diff	Show one commit, or what changed relative to its parent
check	Integrity: hash verification, referential integrity, dangling-object detection
undo / redo	Step through the operation log; reversible, never destructive
operation history / operation restore	Jump to any past point
path list / new / go / close	Named, branch-like alternate histories over one object store
correct / revert / reconcile	Typed relations between commits
export / import	Whole-repo portability, paths and history intact

The DolDoc views (historydoc, reconciledoc, conflictdoc) are TempleOS's own rich-text format; here they become plain-text output carrying the same information. See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Ignore rules and file attributes

A .hgitignore keeps generated files out of offer and status, and a .hgitattributes declares a file's mode (text, binary, executable). Both use a small, deliberately-smaller-than-Git glob grammar, defined in the original project's ADRs (0014, 0015). One rule matters most: ignore only ever hides discovery of untracked material; it never conceals an already-tracked file.

How hgit differs from Git

Not a Git clone wearing a different hat. A few deliberate departures, each backed by a decision record in the original project:

	Git	hgit
File identity	Path-based; a rename is a heuristic guess made after the fact	A stable entity ID travels with a tracked thing across renames and content changes (ADR 0004)
History editing	rebase / reset --hard / gc can destroy commits	Nothing is deleted. undo moves a pointer; an unreferenced commit just sits there, and check reports it as dangling
Relations between commits	A parent-pointer DAG; "this corrects that" lives in a message, if anywhere	Typed relations (correct / revert / reconcile) are real fields on the commit (ADR 0005/0006)
Renames	Similarity-scored heuristic	Exact-content match, plus fuzzy detection for a rename-with-edit (ADR 0008/0009)

None of this makes hgit a replacement for Git. It is a different answer to the same problem.

Experimental: storage and exchange for high-commit-volume workflows

Since 1.9.0 this port (and the original TempleOS project) carry a scoped, experimental set of storage and exchange changes: a writer stores each distinct object once instead of duplicating it on every commit, an interrupted write is recoverable, and a portable incremental exchange file (.hgb/.hgh, spec in contract/BUNDLE.md) sends what a replica is missing rather than the whole repository. None of these techniques is Git-specific — a store-once writer, a tolerant reader, and a manifest-plus-prerequisites exchange file could be adopted by any content-addressed VCS.

The motivation isn't "faster than Git" (Git already solves this at far larger scale, with packfiles, partial clone and its own bundle format). It's that everyday usage is shifting toward far more commits per working copy — agentic tooling producing 50+ commits a day, bigger monorepos, more replicas of one repository to keep in sync — and treating "rewrite the whole archive on every commit, send the whole repository on every exchange" as free stops being true at that volume. See contract/docs/adr/0018-storage-and-exchange-release-policy.md onward for what changed, what was measured, and what's explicitly left as design-only until there's evidence for it.

Why a burning bush?

Exodus 3: a bush burns and is never consumed. TempleOS's creator, Terry Davis, built an entire OS on the premise that God speaks in 640×480 and 16 colors. hgit doesn't share the theology. It takes the one line that describes what the tool does: history burns here, and it is never consumed. undo moves a pointer, it doesn't delete anything, and check will tell you about commits nobody points to anymore, because they're still there, unharmed, in the fire.

The contract with the original

contract/ is a git submodule pinned to a tag of the TempleOS project. It holds the format spec (FORMAT.md), the ADRs and research, the HolyC source being ported, and the golden fixtures. Clone with --recurse-submodules, or run git submodule update --init.

License

GNU General Public License, version 3 or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE.