Version control doesn’t have to be daunting. Sapling’s UI proves that even when working with massive codebases, source control can feel natural, transparent, and efficient. In this post, we’ll explore what Sapling is, Sapling’s core UI components, features, and integrations—all designed to help developers navigate commit history, manage changes, and collaborate on pull requests with confidence and ease.
What is Sapling?
Sapling began as an internal effort at Meta to cope with the company’s sprawling monorepo, which contains tens of millions of files, commits, and branches. Existing version control systems simply weren’t designed to operate at this scale. Instead of breaking the codebase apart, Meta chose to build a source control system that could handle massive repositories, ensuring that engineers could continue to iterate rapidly and maintain a single codebase view.
Key goals of Sapling:
- Scalability: Enable seamless navigation, commits, and operations on repositories far larger than those most engineers will ever encounter.
- Usability: Reduce complexity for new and experienced engineers alike, so that even large-scale repository management tasks feel straightforward and intuitive.
- Interoperability with Git: Sapling’s architecture allows it to support Git repositories. This means you can use Sapling as a drop-in interface for working with GitHub projects while still benefiting from Sapling’s improved user experience.
In short, Sapling aims to combine the familiar concepts of Git and Mercurial—branches, commits, remotes—into a system that can do much more. It’s the next step in evolving source control to handle modern engineering challenges.
A UI Built for clarity and context
Traditional version control tools often rely on a series of inscrutable commands and logs that can be daunting to newcomers and veterans alike. Sapling takes a different approach by providing a clean, human-readable interface. The command-line interface (CLI) is still the core medium of interaction, but it has been thoughtfully organized and enhanced.
Key UI Principles:
- Readability: Instead of dumping raw commit logs, Sapling visually structures your repository’s history, showing how local changes relate to remote branches and mainlines.
- Contextual guidance: Commands like sl (short for “Sapling”) without arguments display a “smartlog”—a structured and annotated commit graph that gives you immediate context on where you are, what’s ahead, and what’s behind.
- Minimal cognitive load: The focus is on showing only what’s necessary. For example, hidden commits or amended commits are clearly marked, so you always understand the state of your stack without combing through verbose logs.
This carefully designed CLI experience ensures that even large-scale repository states remain accessible and manageable. Instead of treating a monorepo as a black box, Sapling’s UI encourages developers to explore and understand their working environment.
Key components of the Sapling UI
1. Undo/Redo interaction: Mistakes are inevitable, but Sapling’s interactive undo functionality ensures that rolling back changes is intuitive. Rather than relying solely on the command line and arcane commit references, Sapling offers a visual representation of the commits you’re about to modify or remove. This “at-a-glance” approach reduces anxiety around undoing work and empowers you to quickly restore the repository to a known good state.
- Visual guidance: The UI highlights which commits are targeted for removal, so you always know what’s changing.
- Commit retrieval: If you need to revisit old commits, Sapling makes it easy. Commands like
sl show HASHandsl unhide HASHleverage the same UI-driven awareness, ensuring that lost commits can be found and recovered.
2. Web interface for comprehensive views: Sapling’s web interface, accessible at http://localhost:3011/?token=..., provides a rich, browser-based experience. Much like popular third-party GUIs, it presents commit history, open pull requests, diffs, and amends, all synced with the server.
- Familiarity for GUI users: For those who prefer a graphical interface—especially users transitioning from tools like GitKraken—the Sapling web UI is a welcome addition. While it may not replace your primary workflow, it’s there when you need a visual perspective.
- Real-time synchronization: Changes made via the CLI or other integrations reflect instantly in the web UI, offering a unified view of your project at all times.
3. Commit interaction and collaboration: The heart of any version control system lies in how it handles commits. Sapling excels here by making it easy to review history, amend changes, and synchronize with remote repositories. Need to tweak a commit? Sapling’s UI makes the process clear and straightforward.
4. PR review and integration: Sapling integrates seamlessly with ReviewStack, a UI built for browsing GitHub pull requests. Instead of juggling between multiple tools, you can move smoothly from managing your local commits to reviewing and merging PRs without losing context.
- CLI status checks: Sapling’s command-line features also let you check pull request statuses directly, ensuring a frictionless review process where code review and source control go hand-in-hand.
Enhancing the user experience
Sapling’s user interface is minimalistic by design, emphasizing clarity over clutter. Instead of presenting a tangle of branches, hashes, and cryptic messages, it focuses on showing you what you need to know—no more, no less.
File & commit management: As you work, file changes automatically appear in Sapling’s UI, similar to running sl status in the terminal. With color-coded indicators and intuitive icons, identifying modified, added, or removed files becomes second nature. This instant feedback loop helps you stay grounded in what’s changed and what’s pending.
Command queueing: Sapling’s UI supports a queued command system, similar to chaining commands in a CLI environment. This approach ensures a smooth, non-blocking workflow. If a command fails or encounters a merge conflict, subsequent commands are automatically canceled, preventing a cascade of errors and saving valuable time.
Navigating repository history: Sapling is designed to manage commit stacks gracefully. Whether you’re moving through a short-lived feature branch or exploring the history of a sprawling monorepo, the UI aids you in quickly finding the commits you need. With intuitive navigation commands and a structured visual representation of commit relationships, you’ll spend less time fumbling through logs and more time coding.
Seamless command integration
Sapling’s familiar commands—clone, amend, rebase, hide, and uncommit—feel natural to anyone coming from Git or Mercurial. The goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel, but to enhance how you interact with version control. By presenting these capabilities within a more accessible UI, Sapling reduces the learning curve and makes advanced repository operations more approachable.
Staying informed with release notes and updates
The version control landscape evolves continuously, and Sapling is no exception. With the Sapling VS Code extension’s changelog and timely release notes, you’ll always know what’s new, what’s improved, and what’s next. This commitment to transparency ensures that you can adapt quickly to new features, harnessing the full potential of Sapling’s UI as it grows and matures.
Conclusion
Sapling’s approach to version control re-imagines the user experience from the ground up. By providing an intuitive UI, robust undo/redo functionality, integrated web interfaces, and seamless interactions with pull requests, Sapling empowers developers to focus on what truly matters—delivering high-quality code, fast. Whether you’re navigating a small repository or orchestrating changes at unprecedented scale, Sapling’s thoughtful design and accessible tooling make source control feel more like a helpful guide than a necessary chore.
For teams looking to refine their workflow even further, Sapling’s compatibility with industry-leading tools offers additional possibilities. For example, pairing Sapling’s clear, visual commit interactions with Graphite’s streamlined code review experience can create a powerful combination. Together, they provide a cohesive environment where developers can collaborate on code, maintain high stand, and accelerate delivery—all while working with tools that put usability and productivity at the forefront.
Sapling's Intuitive UI has been crafted with a focus on simplifying the development process by streamlining common source control workflows. It scales seamlessly for both small and the world’s largest repositories, ensuring ease of use without compromising on performance.
Key Components
Undo/Redo Interaction:
Interactive undo UI allows for a visual representation of commits that will be removed or modified, simplifying the rollback process.
Useful for retrieving old commit hashes which can be used to view and recover commits with
sl show HASHandsl unhide HASH.
Web Interface:
Accessible via
http://localhost:3011/?token=, the web UI presents the commit history, open PRs, diffs, amends, commits, and synchronizes changes with the server.The web UI has been compared to other GUI tools like GitKraken, suggesting that while it may not be the primary choice for all users, it provides a familiar and useful interface for those transitioning from other systems.
Commit Interaction:
- Sapling's UI facilitates working with commits, showcasing the history and providing mechanisms to amend and sync changes efficiently.
Review and Pull Request Integration:
Sapling integrates with ReviewStack, a UI for browsing GitHub pull requests, providing a seamless experience for reviewing and managing pull requests.
A command-line feature allows viewing the statuses of pull requests, adding convenience to the review process.
User Experience
Sapling’s user interface is purposefully minimalistic, focusing on ease of use and understanding. Its commands and interactions are designed to be intuitive, allowing users to focus more on their code and less on managing the complexities of version control.
File and Commit Management:
Changes to files are automatically reflected in the UI, similar to running
sl status.File status is clearly indicated through color-coding and icons, allowing for easy identification of modified, added, or removed files.
Command Queueing:
Similar to chaining commands in CLI, Sapling's UI queues commands as you interact with it, allowing for a non-blocking workflow.
This system ensures that if a command fails or encounters a merge conflict, subsequent queued commands are canceled, preventing further issues.
Navigation and Repository Movement:
- Emphasizing the management of commit stacks, Sapling provides various intuitive ways to navigate through the repository.
Command Integration
Basic commands in Sapling, such as clone, amend, rebase, hide, and uncommit, are familiar to Git and Mercurial users.
The commands are designed not to reinvent the wheel but to enhance the user's ability to manage their source control with an intuitive and powerful system.
Release Notes and Updates
- The Sapling VS Code extension changelog provides users with the latest updates to the web UI, ensuring they are kept informed of new features and improvements.