docs/design: Topics

Continues the conversation started in Discord and hopefully concludes it with a final
design.

docs/design/topics.md

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
+# Topics
+
+Authors: [Philip Metzger](mailto:[email protected]), [Noah Mayr](mailto:[email protected])
+ [Anton Bulakh](mailto:[email protected])
+
+## Summary
+
+Introduce Topics as a truly Jujutsu native way for topological branches, which 
+also replace the current bookmark concept for Git interop. As they have been
+documented to be confusing users coming from Git. They also supersede the 
+`[experimental-advance-branches]` config for those who currently use it, as 
+such a behavior will be built-in for Topics.
+
+
+Topics have been discussed heavily since their appearance in 
+[this Discussion][gh-discuss]. As Noah, Anton and I had a long 
+[Discord discussion][dc-thread] about them, which then also poured into the 
+[Topic issue][issue].
+
+## Prior work 
+
+Currently there only is Mercurial which has a implementation of 
+[Topics][hg-topic]. There also is the [Topic feature][gerrit-topics] in Gerrit,
+which groups commits with a single identifier.
+
+
+## Goals and non-goals
+
+### Goals
+
+The goals for this Project are small, see below.
+
+* Introduce the concept of native topological branches for Jujutsu.
+* Simplify Git interop by reducing the burden on `jj bookmark`.
+* Add Change metadata as a storage concept.
+* Remove the awkward `bookmark` to Git `branch` mapping.
+
+### Non-Goals
+
+* Making bookmarks unnecessary.
+
+## Overview
+
+Until now, Jujutsu had no native set of topological branches, just 
+[Bookmarks][bm] which interact poorly with Git's expectation of branches. 
+Topics on the otherhand are can be made to represent Git branches as users 
+expect them, see [Julia Evans poll][jvns-poll]. They also allow us to 
+seamlessly take over the [tracking-branches][tb] concept.
+
+Other use-cases they're useful for are representing a set of 
+[archived commits][archived] or even a [checkout history][checkout].
+
+### Detailed Design
+
+
+#### Storage
+
+We should store `Topics` as metadata on the serialized proto, without 
+considering the resulting Gencode. 
+
+
+```protobuf
+// A simple Key-Value pair. 
+message StringPair {
+  string key = 1;
+  string value = 2;
+  // Could be extended by a protobuf.Any see the future possibilities section.
+}
+
+message Commit {
+  //...
+  repeated StringPair metadata = N;
+}
+```
+
+while the actual code should look like this:
+
+```rust
+#[derive(ContentHash, ...)]
+struct Commit {
+  //...
+  //
+  // This avoids rewriting the Change-ID, but must be implemented.
+  #[ContentHash(ignore = true)]
+  topics: HashMap<String, String>
+}
+```
+
+#### Backend implications
+
+If Topics were stored as commit metadata, it would allow backends to drop 
+them if necessary. This property can be useful to mark tests as passing
+on a specific client or avoiding a field entirely in database backed backends. 
+
+For the Git backend, we could either embed them in the message, like Arcanist 
+or Gerrit do or store them as Git Notes, if necessary. 
+
+## Alternatives considered 
+
+### Storing Topics out-of-band 
+
+See [Noah's prototype][prototype] for the variant of keeping them out of band.
+While this works it falls short of having the metadata synced by multiple 
+clients, which is something desirable. The prototype thus also avoids rewriting
+the Change-ID which is a good thing, but makes them only locally available.
+
+
+### Single Head Topics
+
+While these are conceptually simpler, they wouldn't help with Git interop where
+it is useful to map a single underlying to multiple Git branches. This also 
+worsens the `jj`-`Git` interop story.
+
+## Future Possibilities
+
+In the future we could attach a `google.protobuf.Any` to the Change metadata, 
+which would allow specific clients, such as testrunners to directly attach test
+results to a Change which could be neat. 
+
+[archived]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/discussions/4180
+[bm]:  ../bookmarks.md
+[checkout]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/issues/3713
+[dc-thread]: https://discord.com/channels/968932220549103686/1224085912464527502
+[gerrit-topics]: https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/cross-repository-changes.html
+[gh-discuss]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/discussions/2425#discussioncomment-7376935
+[hg-topics]: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/doc/evolution/tutorials/topic-tutorial.html#topic-basics
+[issue]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/discussions/2425#discussioncomment-7376935
+[jvns-poll]: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/111709458396281239
+[prototype]: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/pull/3613 

mkdocs.yml

@@ -141,3 +141,4 @@ nav:
     - 'Sparse Patterns v2': 'design/sparse-v2.md'
     - 'Tracking branches': 'design/tracking-branches.md'
     - 'Copy tracking and tracing': 'design/copy-tracking.md'
+    - 'Topics': 'design/topics.md'