old changes seem to disappear from log when updating bookmarks

[xjojorx]

I am probably overlooking something obvious, but I get a behaviour I don't understand.

My team works with git, I happen to be the one using jj because it works good for me.
Whenever I update the "main" bookmark, running jj log gets trimmed and stops showing changes older than the oldest bookmark is.

On a new project which for now only contains the main branch:

jj commit -m "some changes"
jj bookmark set main -r @-
jj git push
jj log

with that I already got it reduced to:

@  wmvtklvs <email> 2025-12-31 09:44:56 3fd8e5de
│  (empty) (no description set)
◆  umnkmskt <email> 2025-12-31 09:44:56 main git_head() 0ab1be84
│  update executeTracked to avoid calling the wrong extension
~

from the '~' in the bottom I guess it is the way for jj to indicate the existence of previous changes, but I can't seem to find the options for seeing those changes.

¿What am I not seeing?

Maybe this is not the right way to update the branches, but it seemed to work fine until it was the time to update main, just moving or setting the bookmark to the new location.

There is probably a related discussion or doc that could answer the question, but I didn't find it.

Thank you.

[jennings]

See this question in the FAQ: Where is my commit, why is it not visible in jj log?

[joyously]

This question indicates a lack in the documentation, so please say what you looked for and where.

There is a FAQ entry
What are elided revisions in the output of jj log? How can I display them?

and right next to it is
Where is my commit, why is it not visible in jj log?

The jj log reference says

By default, the output only includes mutable revisions, along with some additional revisions for context. Use jj log -r :: to see all revisions.

It also mentions elided revisions, but only for those between others (and labeled).

[xjojorx]

I expected it would be obvious and on my face and I was not understanding something right 😅

I did read the FAQ, but somehow I didn't interpret it correctly or did not associate it with why they were not shown.
Now that I read it again in context, I think it may make sense. It is not the same reading it by itself than reading it knowing it is the explanation to what I was looking for.

I cannot test over the same repos right now since it was on my work computer and I don't have it with me, but I'll try and explain how I interpreted the info and didn't get to any conclusion.

Most commits that exist on a remote are not shown. Local commits and their immediate parents (for context) are shown. The thinking is that you are more likely to interact with this set of commits

I guess from this I got that it wasn't for that reason, since it should be a local commit I just made it seconds before, so it should be on the machine. Now I guess that 'local commits' probably doesn't mean that and once pushed, they were no longer included as local, since they were both pushed to the remote, thus turning immutable and not being depended on more than being an ancestor to the current working changes. But I wouldn't have gotten to that conclusion before, probably due to a lack of understanding on my side being new to this.
Being honest, I don't recall trying jj log -r 'all()' like stated on that FAQ for some reason. Even if reading the rest of the answer I discarded the cause, I feels obvious to try it anyway to at least get some more information.

The reference on jj log --help it is inexcusably clear on how by default it only includes mutable revisions and some more for context. I did know that changes became immutable once pushed. I did go through it trying to understand the behavior since it was feeling too weird and I guess I got to the point I did not read it correctly for some reason.

My guess now is that it felt specially weird since I had been on jj for weeks and didn't see anything like that, while I thought I had figured out a workflow and got to expect everything to just still be there. Know I understand that since I had the other bookmarks locally, those intermediate changes were considered relevant and thus they were shown. Since now nothing was dependent of them, they were hidden for simplicity, it makes total sense. I probably got too weirded out this last couple of weeks seeing the change and not understanding what I did or what was the difference and got lost not reading things right.

I think I tried searching for "missing changes", "missing", "hidden commits", something like that; when looking back through the docs, and also here and nothing triggered the connection for me at least.

In the end It really was on the second line of the help I tried to read multiple times. I felt like it had to be something obvious I wasn't seeing and it was.

I guess on some point of the tutorial, or on the info on working with remotes it would be good to mention that it is expected. But I don't see where it would fit, or if it would be that useful since. I have no idea and the help for log is actually clear.

In any case, thank you for pointing it out to me, and sorry for my obtuse brain inability to properly understand what I was reading this morning.

[joyously]

Thanks for the details, but don't beat yourself up. It's a FAQ entry because everyone has that question.
I think I understand your reading and not seeing it, because I did too. I think for me it was too many new concepts at once, since I have only a vague familiarity with Git, and I had to learn some Git to learn some JJ. I personally don't like the revset used as the log default, but you can change it, once you learn revsets. (It's because the newbie doesn't know revsets, why I don't like having one as the default.)