12 ms·

Announcing GitHub Desktop Beta

43 points by smoser 9y ago

misterbowfinger 9y ago
Will this also, without my permission, delete repositories & forks from my laptop that have been DMCA'd on Github?
- macspoofing 9y ago
  Yikes. They did that?
  - gregmac 9y ago
    There seem to be a lot of repositories taken down from Github.com [1] -- over 30 in the past week alone. I am not sure if they've removed repositories from local PCs ever, but presumably with control over the client they could, similar to what Amazon can do with the Kindle [2]. [1] https://github.com/github/dmca/tree/master/2017 https://github.com/github/dmca/tree/master/2017 [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-...
- mdaniel 9y ago
  Yikes, did it take locally modified repo state with it? I mean, even if not that's still horrible, but deleting changes you made is inexcusable And did it delete the .git or the entire working directory?
lol768 9y ago
> We've rebuilt GitHub Desktop from the ground up in Electron to create a simplified user experience focused squarely on how you use GitHub Would be really interested to see some benchmarks comparing the performance of the Electron version and the previous version. Start-up time, time to perform common actions etc. Personally I think it's a bit of a shame, since I seem to remember the previous version making use of the platform's native toolkits and widgets, e.g. WPF on Windows and Cocoa on Mac. I suspect the overall UX will now suffer. I guess it's easier to develop though, and works on Linux now? Edit: Oh, there's still no build for Linux. They do detail some of the reasoning (https://githubengineering.com/how-four-native-developers-wrote-an-electron-app/? https://githubengineering.com/how-four-native-developers-wro...) behind this decision in the GitHub engineering blog and it looks like they've put a lot of work into this. But even the menu bar they've come up with (https://github.com/desktop/desktop/pull/991? https://github.com/desktop/desktop/pull/991?) for Windows is obviously not native. The decision seems to boil down to (paraphrasing) "lots of people are doing web stuff" and "now we can reuse our code" ... which is fine, but again seemingly prioritises the development over the user experience.
- frogfuzion 9y ago
  That's the whole point of Electron period. Cut development costs. Meanwhile end-users (including developers) will suffer, because along with their chrome instances using hundreds of MB in ram, they will have electron apps open using similar (and in many cases more) amounts.
  - HalfwayToDice 9y ago
    I don't care too much about RAM, I do care about the carnage it wrecks on my battery life.
    - geodel 9y ago
      Maybe few extra battery packs will take care of battery issue too?
      - electroner 9y ago
        I like the way you think
  - jackyinger 9y ago
    On top of this I found atom to be pretty unstable, especially when using a bunch of plugins. Text editors are a primary tool and instability is unacceptable. I can't remember any time vim crashed on me.
    - brogrammernot 9y ago
      I agree with you but comparing VIM to Atom or IntelliJ or Visual Studio is an orange to apple comparison.
      - clhodapp 9y ago
        Comparing Atom to one of the native-window ports of Vim or Emacs seems pretty fair to me.
Grue3 9y ago
>a new release of Atom with Git and GitHub Integration and the new GitHub Desktop Beta, completely redesigned on Electron. So how many gigabytes of RAM does it take to run both of these at once?
- lol768 9y ago
  Presumably at least five Chromium processes too?
- ehsankia 9y ago
  I've been having a lot of performance issues with sourcetree so honestly, I don't care how much ram this uses as long as it manages to push a commit to my medium-sized repo in less than 30 seconds...
  - madamelic 9y ago
    `git commit -am` Boom. Less than 30 seconds. Even quicker if you have an alias like `gc`...
- Existenceblinks 9y ago
  Slack, Atom and Github combined is fine(fire) on my 2GB of RAM (operated by El Capitan). It's just like RAM no longer hold data as a cache (less cache hits) and has to write to disk frequently although SSD is much slower than RAM. Not too bad until .. I have to do videography editing, these dev tools have to be closed! All of them!
Dirlewanger 9y ago
So they went from a subpar native application to an even more subpar application on Electron. I think I'll stick with SourceTree. At least that won't take 10 seconds to boot up.
- conover 9y ago
  I've never used Github Desktop but SourceTree has its own set of glaring problems from interface to functionality. I stick with the command line these days.
  - chinhodado 9y ago
    SourceTree just became worse and worse with every release, to the point of unbearable. I am using an old version of SourceTree (1.5.2) and it works great.
    - RubenSandwich 9y ago
      I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that version of SourceTree is affected by this security vulnerability: https://confluence.atlassian.com/sourcetreekb/sourcetree-security-advisory-2017-05-10-900820365.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/sourcetreekb/sourcetree-sec...
mariusmg 9y ago
Sometimes i think Electron is literally the worst thing that happened to desktop apps. Fuck these bloated, +10 seconds startup on a i7 + SSD , non native looking "desktop applications".
- lol768 9y ago
  Yeah, it's a "fad" that I hope ends reasonably soon. I guess a lot of businesses just care moreso that using Electron reduces costs and the user experience and performance isn't a priority.
chinhodado 9y ago
Every time I see a native app rewritten as a "cross platform" webapp I get flashback of the tragic story of pgAdmin and die a little inside.
winteriscoming 9y ago
I use git and github regularly for my hobby/side projects and even for contributing patches to some open source projects hosted on github. My typically workflow is using git command line for commits and the usual things and then a git push to my remote github repo and use their website to submit PRs, respond to reviews etc... I am curious, how people use desktop app for github and what value it adds when compared to just using github website.
- lol768 9y ago
  From personal experience, GitHub Desktop is great for teaching people new to Git about how it works /prior/ to them being comfortable with Git on the command line. It's not something I'd use on a daily basis, but it does make it very easy to make your first commits and PRs - and visually see where you are, what changes you have staged etc.
electroner 9y ago
In this thread you'll find many native app developers who are dismissing Electron because they feel threatened. Cross platform apps are the future. Each day I run at least three Electron apps simultaneously and have no problem whatsoever. You have to be paying close attention to notice, and the reality is that most people do not care. In fact, I was so intrigued by Electron, that I started developing my own app. So far the experience has been pure bliss.
- lol768 9y ago
  > In this thread you'll find many native app developers who are dismissing Electron because they feel threatened. That's an interesting claim to make, what makes you think that a lot of those who are upset by this decision are not just users who have tried Electron applications and found the UX poor? Why are they feeling 'threatened' and not just frustrated with this growing trend? I'm not a native app developer in the slightest sense, I do mostly web work (server-side MVC mostly, but also a lot of frontend work) and enjoy working on security related to that.
  - electroner 9y ago
    Poor UX is an implementation problem, not an Electron problem. The popularity of well-built apps like Slack, Atom, and VSCode would seem to indicate many, many people have no problem with the UX.
- pikzen 9y ago
  >Created 18 minutes ago I didn't know 'open source project shill' was an occupation. I'm feeling audacious, I'll bite. You run three electron apps simultaneously and don't care, but your users are not running on heptacore 16GB RAM machines. They care, a hell of a lot. Hell, even I with an heptacore and 16GB RAM care when Electron apps appropriate two full cores to render shit a CPU from 15 years ago could have done with native technologies.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
devwastaken 9y ago
I don't know why these kinds of applications aren't developed in far better performing frameworks and languages. Github desktop has to process a lot of textual information. With the current version, I've frozen it and crashed it many times due to large files. I actually can't use it anymore due to that. Make it in c++ with QT or some other native toolkits, like every other gilded application of old has. It will 'Just work', which is what developers need. Not fancy UI's
- zeptomu 9y ago
  > It will 'Just work', which is what developers need. Not fancy UI's The whole existence of the GUI client itself is an argument against that as the Git command line interface already works just fine.
  - stinos 9y ago
    I assume that with 'just works' the OP actually meant to say 'just works without too much hassle/overhead'. For example: staging lines/hunks on the commandline does 'just work', no denying that, but in most UI's it's way more efficient and pleasant.
    - jamescostian 9y ago
      Just like how you want a nice UI for staging individual lines, some of us want a nice UI in general, and few of us have low enough standards to consider qt to be "beautiful"
      - roblabla 9y ago
        Qt can be made beautiful. Just like most other UI toolkit out there that support theming. HTML by default is pretty hideous. It's mostly a matter of knowing how the theme engine works. As an example, https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/ qTox looks pretty nice in this screenshot :)
      - devwastaken 9y ago
blackoil 9y ago
I use VSCode now days, as my primary git commit interface. Some improvement are required in diff / merge, but it is very clean interface and never caused any ambiguity. It is also an Electron application, but taking 1/2 battery then Slack, so reasonably efficient.
fletchowns 9y ago
Between git command line, gitk, and git gui I don't really see the need to try tools like SourceTree or this new GitHub Desktop Beta. Is there a compelling reason I'm missing?
- i_am_viet 9y ago
  This tool is not for me or you. It is to ease the entry friction for those who have never worked within our ecosystem.
kogir 9y ago
Will the native versions also be open sourced when they're retired? I'd be willing to volunteer some time to bring the Windows one back up to speed. All I wanted in a new version was for it to respect my system accent color and switch to using system webviews internally (neither of which this new version does either).
pikzen 9y ago
2012: https://github.com/blog/1151-designing-github-for-windows https://github.com/blog/1151-designing-github-for-windows >We specifically made the decision to write each application in a language native to the platform, and this has turned out to be hugely beneficial to us. Because of this separation we've been free to tackle the problems that are most pressing for each platform and work in the best possible tools instead of being constrained to the lowest common denominator. 2017: GitHub discovers software development is hard, falls back on lowest common denominator. EDIT: 80MB installer. Automatically unzips into %ROAMING%. 140 MB of RAM used with a single repo loaded. Yep, sounds like Electron. Oh, also, it doesn't even list any of my repos after logging in.
- amcca029 9y ago
  > Automatically unzips into %ROAMING% blame MS for that garbage > 140 MB of RAM used wow, that would be alot in the 90s
  - pikzen 9y ago
    > blame MS for that garbage Uh... As far as I know, installers work well. Sorry for wanting to choose where I install my stuff. Spoiler: It's not on C:\. Chrome started that trend of install-less installs, and I've hated it ever since. >wow, that would be alot in the 90s Indeed, let's see which processes I have running that take up less than 140MB, shall we? * Battle.net. Full app launcher, with patching capabilities, okay. * OpenHardwareMonitor. Does a shitton more than GitHub. * Mumble. Does a shitton more than GitHub. * Windows Explorer. Does a hell of a shitton more. * Steam. Finding a pattern there? * Origin. Skype. Task Monitor. Intel XTU. The list goes on and on. All doing infinitely more than what amounts to little more than an UI on git.exe Thing is, sometimes I actually need that RAM. To run games, Photoshop, or Atom, depending on how much I hate myself right now. But hey, it's okay, as a developer, you can choose to disrespect your users, that's your choice, not mine :>
- cr0sh 9y ago
  > We specifically made the decision to write each application in a language native to the platform Except for Linux - of course. Now - at least with an Electron app, we might actually finally get a Linux port. In fact, while not official, the current version has been forked and made to work (somewhat) in Linux by someone (I posted a link to it earlier). Sure - they could have done this with Qt or something else - but they didn't, and almost no other company does, either. It's like when they say "cross platform" what they mean is "everything but Linux - because they don't count, amirite?"
RubenSandwich 9y ago
Congratulations Github team! One thing that worrying to me is that you include an 'undo' button that rewrites history. This is bad, as it could affect everyone downstream of you. That button should be turned into a 'revert' button.
sandGorgon 9y ago
If my browser had the capability to set watch on multiple different directories for a service worker, you could have an almost desktop like experience without a different software. With service workers, this would be pretty much do everything that the Dropbox or Github clients can do.
pencilcheck 9y ago
In my opinion, I still think Gitup is much better.

43 points by smoser 9y ago

misterbowfinger 9y ago

Will this also, without my permission, delete repositories & forks from my laptop that have been DMCA'd on Github?

macspoofing 9y ago
Yikes. They did that?
- gregmac 9y ago
  There seem to be a lot of repositories taken down from Github.com [1] -- over 30 in the past week alone. I am not sure if they've removed repositories from local PCs ever, but presumably with control over the client they could, similar to what Amazon can do with the Kindle [2]. [1] https://github.com/github/dmca/tree/master/2017 https://github.com/github/dmca/tree/master/2017 [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-...
mdaniel 9y ago
Yikes, did it take locally modified repo state with it? I mean, even if not that's still horrible, but deleting changes you made is inexcusable And did it delete the .git or the entire working directory?

lol768 9y ago

> We've rebuilt GitHub Desktop from the ground up in Electron to create a simplified user experience focused squarely on how you use GitHub Would be really interested to see some benchmarks comparing the performance of the Electron version and the previous version. Start-up time, time to perform common actions etc. Personally I think it's a bit of a shame, since I seem to remember the previous version making use of the platform's native toolkits and widgets, e.g. WPF on Windows and Cocoa on Mac. I suspect the overall UX will now suffer. I guess it's easier to develop though, and works on Linux now? Edit: Oh, there's still no build for Linux. They do detail some of the reasoning (https://githubengineering.com/how-four-native-developers-wrote-an-electron-app/? https://githubengineering.com/how-four-native-developers-wro...) behind this decision in the GitHub engineering blog and it looks like they've put a lot of work into this. But even the menu bar they've come up with (https://github.com/desktop/desktop/pull/991? https://github.com/desktop/desktop/pull/991?) for Windows is obviously not native. The decision seems to boil down to (paraphrasing) "lots of people are doing web stuff" and "now we can reuse our code" ... which is fine, but again seemingly prioritises the development over the user experience.

frogfuzion 9y ago
That's the whole point of Electron period. Cut development costs. Meanwhile end-users (including developers) will suffer, because along with their chrome instances using hundreds of MB in ram, they will have electron apps open using similar (and in many cases more) amounts.
- HalfwayToDice 9y ago
  I don't care too much about RAM, I do care about the carnage it wrecks on my battery life.
  - geodel 9y ago
    Maybe few extra battery packs will take care of battery issue too?
    - electroner 9y ago
      I like the way you think
- jackyinger 9y ago
  On top of this I found atom to be pretty unstable, especially when using a bunch of plugins. Text editors are a primary tool and instability is unacceptable. I can't remember any time vim crashed on me.
  - brogrammernot 9y ago
    I agree with you but comparing VIM to Atom or IntelliJ or Visual Studio is an orange to apple comparison.
    - clhodapp 9y ago
      Comparing Atom to one of the native-window ports of Vim or Emacs seems pretty fair to me.

Grue3 9y ago

>a new release of Atom with Git and GitHub Integration and the new GitHub Desktop Beta, completely redesigned on Electron. So how many gigabytes of RAM does it take to run both of these at once?

lol768 9y ago
Presumably at least five Chromium processes too?
ehsankia 9y ago
I've been having a lot of performance issues with sourcetree so honestly, I don't care how much ram this uses as long as it manages to push a commit to my medium-sized repo in less than 30 seconds...
- madamelic 9y ago
  `git commit -am` Boom. Less than 30 seconds. Even quicker if you have an alias like `gc`...
Existenceblinks 9y ago
Slack, Atom and Github combined is fine(fire) on my 2GB of RAM (operated by El Capitan). It's just like RAM no longer hold data as a cache (less cache hits) and has to write to disk frequently although SSD is much slower than RAM. Not too bad until .. I have to do videography editing, these dev tools have to be closed! All of them!

Dirlewanger 9y ago

So they went from a subpar native application to an even more subpar application on Electron. I think I'll stick with SourceTree. At least that won't take 10 seconds to boot up.

conover 9y ago
I've never used Github Desktop but SourceTree has its own set of glaring problems from interface to functionality. I stick with the command line these days.
- chinhodado 9y ago
  SourceTree just became worse and worse with every release, to the point of unbearable. I am using an old version of SourceTree (1.5.2) and it works great.
  - RubenSandwich 9y ago
    I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that version of SourceTree is affected by this security vulnerability: https://confluence.atlassian.com/sourcetreekb/sourcetree-security-advisory-2017-05-10-900820365.html https://confluence.atlassian.com/sourcetreekb/sourcetree-sec...

mariusmg 9y ago

Sometimes i think Electron is literally the worst thing that happened to desktop apps. Fuck these bloated, +10 seconds startup on a i7 + SSD , non native looking "desktop applications".

lol768 9y ago
Yeah, it's a "fad" that I hope ends reasonably soon. I guess a lot of businesses just care moreso that using Electron reduces costs and the user experience and performance isn't a priority.

chinhodado 9y ago

Every time I see a native app rewritten as a "cross platform" webapp I get flashback of the tragic story of pgAdmin and die a little inside.

winteriscoming 9y ago

I use git and github regularly for my hobby/side projects and even for contributing patches to some open source projects hosted on github. My typically workflow is using git command line for commits and the usual things and then a git push to my remote github repo and use their website to submit PRs, respond to reviews etc... I am curious, how people use desktop app for github and what value it adds when compared to just using github website.

lol768 9y ago
From personal experience, GitHub Desktop is great for teaching people new to Git about how it works /prior/ to them being comfortable with Git on the command line. It's not something I'd use on a daily basis, but it does make it very easy to make your first commits and PRs - and visually see where you are, what changes you have staged etc.

electroner 9y ago

In this thread you'll find many native app developers who are dismissing Electron because they feel threatened. Cross platform apps are the future. Each day I run at least three Electron apps simultaneously and have no problem whatsoever. You have to be paying close attention to notice, and the reality is that most people do not care. In fact, I was so intrigued by Electron, that I started developing my own app. So far the experience has been pure bliss.

lol768 9y ago
> In this thread you'll find many native app developers who are dismissing Electron because they feel threatened. That's an interesting claim to make, what makes you think that a lot of those who are upset by this decision are not just users who have tried Electron applications and found the UX poor? Why are they feeling 'threatened' and not just frustrated with this growing trend? I'm not a native app developer in the slightest sense, I do mostly web work (server-side MVC mostly, but also a lot of frontend work) and enjoy working on security related to that.
- electroner 9y ago
  Poor UX is an implementation problem, not an Electron problem. The popularity of well-built apps like Slack, Atom, and VSCode would seem to indicate many, many people have no problem with the UX.
pikzen 9y ago
>Created 18 minutes ago I didn't know 'open source project shill' was an occupation. I'm feeling audacious, I'll bite. You run three electron apps simultaneously and don't care, but your users are not running on heptacore 16GB RAM machines. They care, a hell of a lot. Hell, even I with an heptacore and 16GB RAM care when Electron apps appropriate two full cores to render shit a CPU from 15 years ago could have done with native technologies.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

devwastaken 9y ago

I don't know why these kinds of applications aren't developed in far better performing frameworks and languages. Github desktop has to process a lot of textual information. With the current version, I've frozen it and crashed it many times due to large files. I actually can't use it anymore due to that. Make it in c++ with QT or some other native toolkits, like every other gilded application of old has. It will 'Just work', which is what developers need. Not fancy UI's

zeptomu 9y ago
> It will 'Just work', which is what developers need. Not fancy UI's The whole existence of the GUI client itself is an argument against that as the Git command line interface already works just fine.
- stinos 9y ago
  I assume that with 'just works' the OP actually meant to say 'just works without too much hassle/overhead'. For example: staging lines/hunks on the commandline does 'just work', no denying that, but in most UI's it's way more efficient and pleasant.
  - jamescostian 9y ago
    Just like how you want a nice UI for staging individual lines, some of us want a nice UI in general, and few of us have low enough standards to consider qt to be "beautiful"
    - roblabla 9y ago
      Qt can be made beautiful. Just like most other UI toolkit out there that support theming. HTML by default is pretty hideous. It's mostly a matter of knowing how the theme engine works. As an example, https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/ qTox looks pretty nice in this screenshot :)
    - devwastaken 9y ago

blackoil 9y ago

I use VSCode now days, as my primary git commit interface. Some improvement are required in diff / merge, but it is very clean interface and never caused any ambiguity. It is also an Electron application, but taking 1/2 battery then Slack, so reasonably efficient.

fletchowns 9y ago

Between git command line, gitk, and git gui I don't really see the need to try tools like SourceTree or this new GitHub Desktop Beta. Is there a compelling reason I'm missing?

i_am_viet 9y ago
This tool is not for me or you. It is to ease the entry friction for those who have never worked within our ecosystem.

kogir 9y ago

Will the native versions also be open sourced when they're retired? I'd be willing to volunteer some time to bring the Windows one back up to speed. All I wanted in a new version was for it to respect my system accent color and switch to using system webviews internally (neither of which this new version does either).

pikzen 9y ago

2012: https://github.com/blog/1151-designing-github-for-windows https://github.com/blog/1151-designing-github-for-windows >We specifically made the decision to write each application in a language native to the platform, and this has turned out to be hugely beneficial to us. Because of this separation we've been free to tackle the problems that are most pressing for each platform and work in the best possible tools instead of being constrained to the lowest common denominator. 2017: GitHub discovers software development is hard, falls back on lowest common denominator. EDIT: 80MB installer. Automatically unzips into %ROAMING%. 140 MB of RAM used with a single repo loaded. Yep, sounds like Electron. Oh, also, it doesn't even list any of my repos after logging in.

amcca029 9y ago
> Automatically unzips into %ROAMING% blame MS for that garbage > 140 MB of RAM used wow, that would be alot in the 90s
- pikzen 9y ago
  > blame MS for that garbage Uh... As far as I know, installers work well. Sorry for wanting to choose where I install my stuff. Spoiler: It's not on C:\. Chrome started that trend of install-less installs, and I've hated it ever since. >wow, that would be alot in the 90s Indeed, let's see which processes I have running that take up less than 140MB, shall we? * Battle.net. Full app launcher, with patching capabilities, okay. * OpenHardwareMonitor. Does a shitton more than GitHub. * Mumble. Does a shitton more than GitHub. * Windows Explorer. Does a hell of a shitton more. * Steam. Finding a pattern there? * Origin. Skype. Task Monitor. Intel XTU. The list goes on and on. All doing infinitely more than what amounts to little more than an UI on git.exe Thing is, sometimes I actually need that RAM. To run games, Photoshop, or Atom, depending on how much I hate myself right now. But hey, it's okay, as a developer, you can choose to disrespect your users, that's your choice, not mine :>
cr0sh 9y ago
> We specifically made the decision to write each application in a language native to the platform Except for Linux - of course. Now - at least with an Electron app, we might actually finally get a Linux port. In fact, while not official, the current version has been forked and made to work (somewhat) in Linux by someone (I posted a link to it earlier). Sure - they could have done this with Qt or something else - but they didn't, and almost no other company does, either. It's like when they say "cross platform" what they mean is "everything but Linux - because they don't count, amirite?"

RubenSandwich 9y ago

Congratulations Github team! One thing that worrying to me is that you include an 'undo' button that rewrites history. This is bad, as it could affect everyone downstream of you. That button should be turned into a 'revert' button.

sandGorgon 9y ago

If my browser had the capability to set watch on multiple different directories for a service worker, you could have an almost desktop like experience without a different software. With service workers, this would be pretty much do everything that the Dropbox or Github clients can do.

pencilcheck 9y ago

In my opinion, I still think Gitup is much better.