# Grit Git rewrite in Rust

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Grit Git rewrite in Rust and 37 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a memory-safe Rust library for Git-based tools under a permissive license. Critics call it incomplete and say relicensing GPL code is bad faith.

## Why people recommend it

- Library for building Git tools (2 comments): "This isn't for the person using Git. This is for someone trying to build a tool that wants to use parts of Git" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470604)) "feature complete (even if sloppy) library implementation of Git" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470625))
- Claims broad Git feature coverage (2 comments): "feature complete (even if sloppy) library implementation of Git" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470625)) "all of this is (theoretically) currently covered in Grit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468947))
- Impressive AI-assisted approach (2 comments): "I liked their approach (just had a very buggy transformer/language)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47808146)) "I have to admit they are impressive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475746))
- Memory-safe Rust implementation (2 comments): "feature complete (even if sloppy) library implementation of Git" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470625)) "it's memory safe. Not that git has any important memory issue" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470052))

## What people warn about

- Relicensing GPL code is bad faith (6 comments): "building on a GPL3 project's complete test suite and relicensing under MIT is not acting in good faith toward the original authors" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469164)) "showing them exactly how you treat other people's code/licenses by "deciding" to not carry forward the GPL license" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469269)) "The intent here is extraction of all the value provided by copyleft projects without the obligation to give back." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48471355))
- AI used for copyright laundering (4 comments): "ask a robot to recreate your favorite software just so you can relicense it for your business venture" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469453)) "Assuming the current claims here, that would just be license washing with volunteer assistance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473129)) "It burns a lot of goodwill to use an AI for what many people will see as copyright laundering" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475213))
- Slower, incomplete, untested, buggy (3 comments): "It almost certainly cheated on a bunch of those tests and is not feature complete yet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470735)) "It's slower, more obtuse, more bloated, less capable, exponentially less scalable at any size." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470896)) "A slower, untested, incomplete git implementation, all for the low low price of $10-$15,000." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469683))
- Costly AI tokens, rising prices (2 comments): "So it is not entire then but somehow that was worth burning $8,000~ dollars worth of tokens?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468697)) "That $15k is indeed a very low low subsidized AI price. It will be $150k next year." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48519598))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Gitoxide](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitoxide.md): 13 recommend
- [libgit2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libgit2.md): 8 recommend
- [ziggit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ziggit.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Grit Git rewrite in Rust", https://hackerapproved.com/p/grit/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).