5 ms·

Its true -- and actually the well designed gui that accurately depicts the graphical state of your local repository makes it far easier to learn the concepts be

Its true -- and actually the well designed gui that accurately depicts the graphical state of your local repository makes it far easier to learn the concepts behind git than does the command line. Distributed vc is conceptually nuanced, but not overly complicated -- the complexity of git really is in the interface wherein you are asked to map command line syntax into abstract operations that manipulate a state that you actually can't easily see from the command line. The value of having a graphical depiction of the state that's changing as you invoke operations should not be underestimated. http://gitup.co http://gitup.co I love this tool -- it's honestly one of the best graphical tools I've ever used -- rock solid reliable -- intuitive, not leaky in the abstractions it represents -- and not limited to only "simple" operations. And with the graphical reflog history rollback view -- it's always really easy to back up however far you want if you mess up which gives great confidence as you explore the ui's features. Ive taken designers from "never used git" to confidently pushing, pulling, rebasing, and resolving conflicts in less than a day (and most of it after the first 10 minutes without outside help).

sillysaurus3 10y ago
Just ran `brew cask install gitup`, cd'd into my repo and ran `gitup`. Took about 60 seconds and so far it's quite impressive. Clicking on a commit and pressing space brings up a view showing a github-style diff, a list of all changed files, and the complete commit message. Nice. Thanks for the tip!
- breatheoften 10y ago
  Happy to share! I had to do a site visit with a customer recently and spent some time pair programming on their codebase -- on a Windows machine and they used an awful git client -- really reminded me how much I appreciate using gitup!
lnalx 10y ago
Only for iUsers... Really searching for a Linux alternative !
- Stratoscope 10y ago
  I don't know how it compares to GitUp, but SmartGit works on Linux, Windows, and macOS. I use it on all three platforms and recommend it highly. See my other comment in the subthread for more thoughts about it.
  - andrepd 10y ago
    It's not free software though.
    - Stratoscope 10y ago
      True, SmartGit is not open source or free-as-in-speech. It is free-as-in-beer if you use it for open source or noncommercial purposes. I use it for commercial projects and didn't blink at their price - it's paid for itself many times over.
  - lnalx 10y ago
    All GUI clients on Linux I tested are plenty of buttons and menus, it makes me cry...
- tillinghast 10y ago
  Have you tried GitKraken? https://www.gitkraken.com/ https://www.gitkraken.com/ Seems like there's a glut of these apps of late—not that I'm complaining! :-)
  - andrepd 10y ago
    It's built on electron, though.
    - tillinghast 10y ago
      Which, as far as I know, works on Linux.
      - 10y ago
OJFord 10y ago
This looks like an awesome way to learn git, and many would probably love to continue with it - but many others too would prefer to move to the CLI. I used to use a GUI for git, but now I just find them cumbersome; by their nature requiring me to switch window for less.
- V-2 10y ago
  For commands maybe, but nothing beats a graphical history tree. It's hard for a human to imagine a complex branch history without a good visual aid
  - mi100hael 10y ago
    I can't think of a single time I've actually ever cared to look at anything other than a linear history or a single file's blame. I do have a 'hist' alias set up (http://blog.wittchen.biz.pl/basics-of-git/#gist16617665 http://blog.wittchen.biz.pl/basics-of-git/#gist16617665), but it's not something I ever actually use.
    - V-2 10y ago
      Good for you. I'm probably not as smart and more likely to get confused without having the history laid out in the form of a clean, coloured graph. At any rate, it allows me to free whatever brain power I have for other purposes
  - OJFord 10y ago
    I agree, and often use a `log --bunch -of --options` alias to view this - but slightly prettier rendering isn't going to make me switch window and back again.
- breatheoften 10y ago
  I actually used to think similarly before I found git up -- although to me it wasn't about switching window context away from the terminal but rather switching away from the text editor. I imagined that the ideal place for featureful visualization/interaction with the repo would be in the text editor/ide. In reality though -- i really like having the separate window -- it's always there, does one thing and does it well, and it's easy to switch to when I want to take a look at the state of my repo/upstream branches/any dirtiness in my checkout (what exactly have I done recently?). I regularly use three editors when working on different platforms -- Xcode, android studio, atom -- sometimes it's convenient to use in ide repo-driven features (blame, sometimes historical diffs for a single file), however very often I'm actually more interested in quickly seeing diffs for files other than the one(s) I'm currently editing -- so switching to a separate app context that's all about showing repo info tends to be the fastest way to see the relevant info I want side by side without changing away from the editing context I want. More often than not navigating to most relevant diffs within the ide would actually involve more expensive context switching -- for me I'm discovering that it's always somewhat high risk to switch editor contexts -- editing text is just such a powerful interface that it tends to easily lead down rabbit holes that take me further from the most relevant info for my current task context. Once I have the most useful buffers in the right windows, with maybe some reasonable things in the editor navigation stack -- changing the editor views at that point comes with a pretty high risk of straying off task -- or operating for awhile with the non optimal set of editor windows in front of my face -- which at some point I'll realize is dumb/wastes energy and fix -- but energy was already spent in the meanwhile ... Honestly I'm not aware of any common repo tasks that I could more efficiently complete via the command line vs gitup. There are good keyboard shortcuts for everything in gitup so most everything I do doesn't even involve the mouse. Also -- I'm the kind of person who's always got a set of terminal windows open and definitely uses them often (almost never use Finder, hate taking my hands off the keyboard to reach for the trackpad). At this point -- I never reach for the git cli over gitup (except when cloning a new repo).
dilap 10y ago
Preach! I absolutely love gitup; all of these slice-and-dice operations that are brainteasers in command-line git are just intuitively obvious in gitup. Absolutely one of my favorite pieces of software, ever. git is basically a brilliant repo model combined with an insane cli. gitup is the brilliant ui that the repo model deserves. bonus awesome thing about gitup: it monitors the filesystem and updates its state in realtime, so it it's seemless to mix your workflow between cli and gui.
BrandoElFollito 10y ago
I had a look at the tool, watched the screencast and was impressed. Then I saw, at the very bottom that this is for Macs. The disappointment...

sillysaurus3 10y ago

Just ran `brew cask install gitup`, cd'd into my repo and ran `gitup`. Took about 60 seconds and so far it's quite impressive. Clicking on a commit and pressing space brings up a view showing a github-style diff, a list of all changed files, and the complete commit message. Nice. Thanks for the tip!

breatheoften 10y ago
Happy to share! I had to do a site visit with a customer recently and spent some time pair programming on their codebase -- on a Windows machine and they used an awful git client -- really reminded me how much I appreciate using gitup!

lnalx 10y ago

Only for iUsers... Really searching for a Linux alternative !

Stratoscope 10y ago
I don't know how it compares to GitUp, but SmartGit works on Linux, Windows, and macOS. I use it on all three platforms and recommend it highly. See my other comment in the subthread for more thoughts about it.
- andrepd 10y ago
  It's not free software though.
  - Stratoscope 10y ago
    True, SmartGit is not open source or free-as-in-speech. It is free-as-in-beer if you use it for open source or noncommercial purposes. I use it for commercial projects and didn't blink at their price - it's paid for itself many times over.
- lnalx 10y ago
  All GUI clients on Linux I tested are plenty of buttons and menus, it makes me cry...
tillinghast 10y ago
Have you tried GitKraken? https://www.gitkraken.com/ https://www.gitkraken.com/ Seems like there's a glut of these apps of late—not that I'm complaining! :-)
- andrepd 10y ago
  It's built on electron, though.
  - tillinghast 10y ago
    Which, as far as I know, works on Linux.
    - 10y ago

OJFord 10y ago

This looks like an awesome way to learn git, and many would probably love to continue with it - but many others too would prefer to move to the CLI. I used to use a GUI for git, but now I just find them cumbersome; by their nature requiring me to switch window for less.

V-2 10y ago
For commands maybe, but nothing beats a graphical history tree. It's hard for a human to imagine a complex branch history without a good visual aid
- mi100hael 10y ago
  I can't think of a single time I've actually ever cared to look at anything other than a linear history or a single file's blame. I do have a 'hist' alias set up (http://blog.wittchen.biz.pl/basics-of-git/#gist16617665 http://blog.wittchen.biz.pl/basics-of-git/#gist16617665), but it's not something I ever actually use.
  - V-2 10y ago
    Good for you. I'm probably not as smart and more likely to get confused without having the history laid out in the form of a clean, coloured graph. At any rate, it allows me to free whatever brain power I have for other purposes
- OJFord 10y ago
  I agree, and often use a `log --bunch -of --options` alias to view this - but slightly prettier rendering isn't going to make me switch window and back again.
breatheoften 10y ago
I actually used to think similarly before I found git up -- although to me it wasn't about switching window context away from the terminal but rather switching away from the text editor. I imagined that the ideal place for featureful visualization/interaction with the repo would be in the text editor/ide. In reality though -- i really like having the separate window -- it's always there, does one thing and does it well, and it's easy to switch to when I want to take a look at the state of my repo/upstream branches/any dirtiness in my checkout (what exactly have I done recently?). I regularly use three editors when working on different platforms -- Xcode, android studio, atom -- sometimes it's convenient to use in ide repo-driven features (blame, sometimes historical diffs for a single file), however very often I'm actually more interested in quickly seeing diffs for files other than the one(s) I'm currently editing -- so switching to a separate app context that's all about showing repo info tends to be the fastest way to see the relevant info I want side by side without changing away from the editing context I want. More often than not navigating to most relevant diffs within the ide would actually involve more expensive context switching -- for me I'm discovering that it's always somewhat high risk to switch editor contexts -- editing text is just such a powerful interface that it tends to easily lead down rabbit holes that take me further from the most relevant info for my current task context. Once I have the most useful buffers in the right windows, with maybe some reasonable things in the editor navigation stack -- changing the editor views at that point comes with a pretty high risk of straying off task -- or operating for awhile with the non optimal set of editor windows in front of my face -- which at some point I'll realize is dumb/wastes energy and fix -- but energy was already spent in the meanwhile ... Honestly I'm not aware of any common repo tasks that I could more efficiently complete via the command line vs gitup. There are good keyboard shortcuts for everything in gitup so most everything I do doesn't even involve the mouse. Also -- I'm the kind of person who's always got a set of terminal windows open and definitely uses them often (almost never use Finder, hate taking my hands off the keyboard to reach for the trackpad). At this point -- I never reach for the git cli over gitup (except when cloning a new repo).

dilap 10y ago

Preach! I absolutely love gitup; all of these slice-and-dice operations that are brainteasers in command-line git are just intuitively obvious in gitup. Absolutely one of my favorite pieces of software, ever. git is basically a brilliant repo model combined with an insane cli. gitup is the brilliant ui that the repo model deserves. bonus awesome thing about gitup: it monitors the filesystem and updates its state in realtime, so it it's seemless to mix your workflow between cli and gui.

BrandoElFollito 10y ago

I had a look at the tool, watched the screencast and was impressed. Then I saw, at the very bottom that this is for Macs. The disappointment...