28 ms·

Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

286 points by archagon 7y ago

SenHeng 7y ago
For Mac users, nothing beats GitUp[0] 0: https://gitup.co https://gitup.co
- em-bee 7y ago
  could you elaborate how it compares to fork and why it would be better? as someone who is training developers, cross-platform is a critical feature. gitup fails on that. on the other hand it's FOSS, another critical feature for me. fork fails on that one. so it's a tossup, and i probably can't recommend either for those reasons.
- amiantos 7y ago
  I use GitUp as my primary git client, but I switch to Fork to handle complicated rebasing. Fork’s “interactive rebase” tool is fantastic, if GitUp had it I’d never need to switch away. I actually registered a HN account just to say this about Fork, it’s that helpful to me.
- ngrilly 7y ago
  I like GitUp, but how do you handle the fact that the map view doesn't show commit messages and dates (like gitk for example)?
archagon 7y ago
Not my work, but this is one of the most impressive Git clients I've extensively used — and it's free. Tons of features, lots of thought put into usability, and fully native. If this were a $50 product, I'd happily pay it, but there's not even a donation link. Just wanted to share!
- figiel 7y ago
  Is it more impressive than the git command line client? What does it do better?
  - KuhlMensch 7y ago
    DISCLAIMER: Obviously some git tasks are just the wrong fit for a GUI, and some git tasks are just not possible. I've not used Fork but I find SourceTree (which looks very similar) MUCH quicker to search for, and build commits from, hunks. I mean perhaps if I really invested in the git tool I could get my speed up, but I don't see the point - I have what I need already in SourceTree. More generally the tree-structure of the git filesystem often lends itself to persistent visualisations e.g. split view graph + branches. Especially when fetching, and the graph automatically re-renders and shows you an unexpected structure. If we are talking about vanilla git - GUIs can be a nice drop in to speed up commit work flows like "checkout that commit I was working approx a dozen commits ago". Being able visually-grep, and then double-click is a bit faster than `git log --pretty=oneline; git checkout SHA"` And finally, and they are a great on-boarding wrapper for users who are new to git. I've had good success unblocking users with very little git experience who are only using a git CLI, by introducing a git GUI. This really flattens out the learning curve, which frees up both devs to concentrate on the _actual_ task at hand.
abc_lisper 7y ago
Yeah, please put a donation link. I would happily pay if I enjoy using it
afarrell 7y ago
Alongside a donation link, you should put a "purchase a license" or "purchase a subscription" link. That way, an engineer can upload the resulting receipt to expensify and get reimbursed by their employer. Employers are used to paying for software licenses out of engineering budgets; Donations would generally come out of a different budget managed by someone an engineer doesn't work with day-to-day.
- SyneRyder 7y ago
  Another +1 for them adding a price to this. It's a really good program and even as a solo indie developer, I want to give them money so they can afford to keep working on it. Customer support takes time too, I've already emailed them about one bug & used up some minutes of the developer's time. Preferably not a subscription, though. The whole reason I started using Fork is because their competitor Tower switched to a subscription model, so I started looking for competitors. The Fork developers seem keen on keeping it free, so maybe something like the Sublime Text / REAPER model where it has a nag screen on startup but will keep working anyway (useful for us indie developers until the money rolls in). I also like the idea of no internet-based licensing, so if the company ever disappears I can still use the software.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    I think the point is that it should remain a free project but put an artificial "price" instead of a donation link. This is similar to what SQLite does (offering a $1000 license, where you're basically paying for a piece of paper saying "no really, you can use this freely").
    - Tomte 7y ago
      Plus the phone number of a developer, with a response 24/7, I think.
      - jakear 7y ago
        Support is actually an entirely different (and much more expensive) concept. Business Hours phone support starts at 8k, but 24/7 phone support costs as much as 85k/year. https://sqlite.org/prosupport.html https://sqlite.org/prosupport.html
mehrdadn 7y ago
What distinguishes it from TortoiseGit on Windows?
- yoz-y 7y ago
  Judging solely from screenshots I’d say the biggest difference is that it is not a shell extension but a self contained program.
- somada141 7y ago
  Also it's really helpful if you have heaps of repos and want a centralised view and to quickly switch from one to the other with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+O
- gregmac 7y ago
  I would describe TortoiseGit as file-centric, while most other git Gui tools (including this, judging by the screenshots) are timeline-centric. With timelines, you are dealing mainly with diffs (what's changed in your working directory, or a commit), and the files involved are just a side effect of that. The files that are unchanged are simply not displayed at all in the UI. This is especially conducive to using the staging area and committing partial files. Tortoise shows you working directory diffs but only if you ask via several clicks (eg, creating a commit). Because you interact via Explorer, every time-based action is hidden behind context menu. IMHO about the only thing easier in tortoise is viewing history or blame on a specific file or directory.
lioeters 7y ago
Happy user of Fork here. I switched a few months ago from SourceTree, as it was getting laggy due to having a large number of repos. Fork is a performant Git GUI client, well-designed with most practical features you could want. It's a native app written separately for macOS and Windows - though they might use their own cross-platform library, I seem to recall reading about it. Anyway, it's excellent software, I'm willing to pay to support development.
latchkey 7y ago
Just downloaded it from the link on the website and the downloaded version was one release behind, which means an immediate ~50meg download again. Please be considerate of people on slow/remote/expensive connections.
bbbobbb 7y ago
Looks nice and clean, although useless for me as a Linux user. The one thing I use graphical git client for is resolving merge issues, so something lightweight is nice. Currently I just do it in IntelliJ and hope I already have the project opened. As a side note, I guess the images on the website are fairly small, but they pay for it with tons of jpeg artifacts which does not look clean.
- dmortin 7y ago
  > Looks nice and clean, although useless for me as a Linux user. That's why Electron GUIs are good. People say they are bloated, but at least the program is available for Linux as well.
  - tarasmatsyk 7y ago
    Even in SE field Linux market is small, that was one of the reasons I've moved out of it as my primary OS
    - realusername 7y ago
      Not for products targeting software engineers, the distributions of systems looks very different from the general public and Linux is very common.
  - stephenr 7y ago
    So we’re all forced to use shit apps? No thanks. I imagine the number of Linux desktop using developers who use git and want a git GUI is numbering in the hundreds, worldwide.
    - alexeiz 7y ago
      > numbering in the hundreds So like 50% of total Linux desktop users? Haha, just kidding. I, for myself, use tig and git command line and I'm pretty happy with it.
radicalriddler 7y ago
From a brief use, it looks good, definitely a lot faster than something like Gitkraken. I'll be happy to see where you guys take this project.
somada141 7y ago
Just downloaded it cause SourceTree has been getting slower and more temperamental over time. Seems fantastic and very fast thus far, I'll be testing it more extensively over the coming weeks and might well switch to this. Beautiful work!
- somada141 7y ago
  Also would love a GitFlow integration like the one you get in SourceTree [1] or Tower [2]. [1] https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-with-sourcetree-and-git-flow/ https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-wi... [2] https://www.git-tower.com/help/win/integration/git-flow https://www.git-tower.com/help/win/integration/git-flow
- somada141 7y ago
  Been using it for work and my first 'request' would be to add the "commit message recall" that SourceTree offers, a feature I always missed in Tower. With it I can make small commits individually (eg "added new CRUD resource-class for users") and then recall the last message and make minor changes (eg changing "users" to "posts", "comments", etc). I might be alone in loving this feature though :D
pjtr 7y ago
Why do merge tools pretend that "their" and "our" or "remote" and "local" are good labels? Can they not show the commit message and hash? Nowadays with history editing often both sides are local and mine.
- frizkie 7y ago
  And then they get misspelled as "their's" and "our's".
- jmiserez 7y ago
  Did you see the screenshots? Looks like it shows the branches at least.
  - pjtr 7y ago
    I did see the screenshots. That's what triggered my comment. I did not see any branch names. Now I see "nh-scroll-fix" and "origin/fix-simulate-na..." in the conflict dialog, but not in the merge dialog. Branch names seem insufficient anyway though, but it would be a slight improvement I guess.
- adrianmsmith 7y ago
  And, on the command-line at least, "theirs" and "ours" are reversed (only) for "rebase" [1] so that means, at least for me, I have to mentally ask myself "are theirs/ours reversed for this command?" for every command I execute, they might as well be called "foo" and "bar" at this point for me. [1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase#Documentation/git-rebase.txt---merge https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase#Documentation/git-rebase...
tarasmatsyk 7y ago
I've discovered Fork by looking at my teammate's screen :D I am very skeptical about any git UI especially anything out of my IDE as switching windows distracts me. However, after trying it a bit: - it works and looks much better than SourceTree, GitKraken - it's free (while I would prefer using a Sublime license model if asked) - it has GitFlow integration (not a big fan of it, however it gives you a git workflow template out of the box, worth checking) Thank you, Dan and Tanya, for the hard work!
radres 7y ago
I wish it worked on linux
cyberferret 7y ago
Problems with BitBucket? Trying to sign on to BB after downloading and keep getting the error "Could not parse error json data".
petters 7y ago
Does it run precommits that have keyboard interactions? We use that a lot and Sublime Merge does not work.
josteink 7y ago
Quick feedback to whoever maintains the web-page. I'm looking at the introduction, the screenshots and all looks nice. Then at the bottom of the screen I get the text "Download Fork for Mac", and nothing else. No Windows-download. Had the headline on HN not been explicit about there being a Windows-version, I wouldn't have gone looking... And therefore not found the tiny "For for Windows" navigation item on top of the page. I would have assume this was Mac only and left. Any reason you different pages, and particularly why you don't show both download links on the bottom of the screen? I'm pretty sure you're at risk of missing 99% of the potential Windows-users skimming by this page.
- ukyrgf 7y ago
  It's definitely Mac-centric. Mac in all the screenshots. Mac link in the menu has a blue border to make it stand out and the Windows one doesn't. Like you said, the bottom of the homepage is a link to download the Mac version. Release notes are all for Mac, no Windows. The blog talks about "Fork", which is a Mac app, and then a separate "Fork for Windows".
jlis 7y ago
I use Fork on work and also private. Great software. One of the main reasons to switch is the merge/conflict view, which is, at least in my opinion, one of the best out there. Previously I've used Sourcetree and SmartGit, and even some Git integration in PHPStorm/WebStorm. But for now, Fork is just lit. If I could I just wish for one thing: mark branches which are only local and have no remote, so you can easily purge old branches after they're merged.
- jmiserez 7y ago
  >mark branches which are only local and have no remote, so you can easily purge old branches after they're merged. git fetch --prune EDIT: Then you can see which ones don't exist on the remote git branch -v which will show [gone] if it's a tracked branch but the corresponding upstream branch isn't there anymore. Use -vv to show the upstream branch names as well. See: - https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch#_pruning https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch#_pruning - https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch
  - uasi 7y ago
    git fetch --prune removes stale remote-tracking references, not local branches.
    - jmiserez 7y ago
      You are right. I've updated my comment above and added a second step which shows which branches can be removed.
- Bootwizard 7y ago
  Better than BeyondCompare?
bdreadz 7y ago
Highly recommend. Switched after another developer at my office mentioned it. I suggested the filter active branch hot key and it was added I believe in less than a week. Comes out of the box with a great dark mode. The way you can view the commits diffs in the program is wonderful as well. It's the one thing I didn't like about git kraken. Which I even had suggested that they add a different view for that and I would have purchased for my whole team. Take a look at this one. The ability to jump between branches is great with command B. Keep up the good work. Like people have already mention please make a donate button as I'll gladly donate to encourage the continued work.
ebr4him 7y ago
10/10 Would use again. I'm a lurker but had to comment on this. A great app that I use daily and can't believe its free.
groundCode 7y ago
As someone pretty comfortable with got on the command line, what advantages would a GUI give me? I’m not trolling, it’s an honest question. Anyone with good got command line skills move to something like this and find it offers them a better workflow?
- rado 7y ago
  Multiple repos visible at a glance
- Bootwizard 7y ago
  Basically, in GUIs the most common commands are represented in UI, and some combined into a single action. Also, visually viewing the entire tree (not sure the name for the entire branching structure) can be helpful to debugging and fixing issues caused by merging, accidental overwrites, etc. The disadvantages are: - cherry picking commits is not easy - lacks advanced (read uncommon) commands - sometimes git errors are encountered that can only be solved with command line anyways It's also way easier to onboard junior engineers who haven't used version control before.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    > visually viewing the entire tree [branching structure] You can do that with git CLI no problem, it's one of my most used aliases (so I can't recall exactly the underlying command) - just flags to log. --pretty=oneline --all --decorate is the key bit iirc. While I'm at it, my hands down most used alias is 'fixup', which takes a ref, commits with message 'fixup! <ref>' and rebases with whatever flag makes it turn that into 'fixup' instead of 'pick' automatically. i.e. it's commit --amend for older commits. Recently I added fzsha and fzfile too, which use fzf to fuzzy find a SHA/file, and call the git command given as $1 with it and any other supplied args. So git fzfile add stages whatever I choose in fzf, and likewise git fzsha fixup amends a fuzzy-found commit. These GUIs look pretty, but I've no desire to learn one when it inevitably misses some things I use frequently, and adds new features I don't have, sure, but no (quick, maybe it's open source and .. sure) way of adding my own.
rado 7y ago
Thanks for ridding me of GitHub Desktop’s Electron bloat on Mac. Native apps, please come back.
4di 7y ago
Fork is awesome. I've been using Windows for the past year for a project and missed GitUp on Mac. After trying a few clients (Tower, SourceTree, Kraken, and a few others) I stayed with Fork - very fast, performant, and intuitive. Right now I have about 15 repo tabs open in Fork with a large number of branches in each. The tree view is excellent (I actually liked the older one-line-per-entry version). Fork recently added the ability to compare branches - literally click two times to get a diff within half a second. I really can't believe this app is free. Well done to the makers of this excellent app!
gabrielizaias 7y ago
Does is support signing commits? I can't tell form the website. I usually go for the command line and only reach for a GUI if I made a lot of changes that should be committed separately and Github Desktop doesn't work with signed commits at all.
MarkSweep 7y ago
The license prohibits all kinds of things so I am not comfortable using it: https://fork.dev/license https://fork.dev/license Specifically, it says: * "You will not use this Software to engage in or allow others to engage in any illegal activity.": Which jurisdiction? how far do I have to go to prevent illegal activity? * "You will not engage in using this Software that will interfere with or damage the operation of the services of any third parties[...]" How is this defined? How quickly can I push the "git pull" button before I violate this term? * "You will not use this Software to engage in any activity that will violate the rights of third parties, including, without limitation, [...]" again, which jurisdiction?
- hnarn 7y ago
  What a silly license. Why do people insist on rolling their own? It's quite amazing to me, especially when it comes to things like cryptography and legal texts. Surely any lawyer could point at these phrases and say what you're saying now -- how do you define this? Sure, you could argue that keeping it vague is a way to protect the authors, but I'd argue that a competent lawyer would write it in a less vague way, to protect the authors even more -- if it was necessary. Is it? I doubt it, considering the type of software we see under insanely brief licenses like the MIT.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    The MIT license is extremely permissive. It's a stupid measuring post for comparison, because it basically doesn't say anything at all. Yes, they could have consulted with and paid a lawyer to tighten up the wording. But unless you either own a company, or intend to use this in consulting work, I don't think this license should bother you at all. The intent and general meaning are pretty clear, even if you could argue over the definition of one word or another.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I can answer one of your questions: "This agreement shall be governed by the laws of Czeck Republic. If any portion of this Agreement is deemed unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, it shall not affect the forcibility of the other portions of this Agreement." Though, this license is pretty much radioactive for me: "You will not, and will not permit others to reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works from this Software..." Fair enough if you want to use whatever license you want to use, but definitely a "no thanks" from me...
srikz 7y ago
This looks neat! It will be great to have a Linux version in the future. I’m not too hopeful as this seems to be made native to the platforms (and very well!) by experienced native devs. Maybe, the app becomes very popular and there will eventually be a Linux version of such good quality.
duckfruit 7y ago
Amazing, well crafted piece of software. I wonder how they can afford to build and maintain it for free.
Spacemolte 7y ago
The whole, if the product is free you are the product etc. So, how is this free? It really does look amazing, which is probably why I wonder how it can be free.
- somethingnot 7y ago
  Git is also free. So, how are you the product when you use git?
  - RussianCow 7y ago
    Git is open source and a community project; Fork is closed source and developed by two people.
- archagon 7y ago
  Not everything aims to be a "product", I suppose.
fishnchips 7y ago
This is pretty awesome, thanks for working on that! At the moment I'm struggling a bit trying to figure out how to use GPG. My Git profile is set up to require signed commits and the website claims this is supported, but it's at least not obvious how to do that.
Kipters 7y ago
It looks like it's a WPF app on Windows and a Cocoa app (via Xamarin.Mac) on macOS. It feels good to not try something based on Electron for once.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  I wonder if they used a cross platform library abstracting the two.
  - Kipters 7y ago
    It looks like I was wrong: the macOS version has lots of Swift frameworks inside of it and no hints of Xamarin, they appear to be two completely separate apps
    - rvz 7y ago
      So essentially: Mac app written with Cocoa/ObjC/Swift and the Windows app written with C# and WPF. A great example of native software. I'd prefer something like Fork over something like GitKraken IMHO. I cannot imagine the performance of some electron alternatives if I were to open a repository with 200k commits, but this can be resolved with shallow cloning. Even if it has lots of Swift frameworks embedded, as soon as they switch to Swift 5 and Mojave and higher, Swift will become built in with no dylibs.
      - Kipters 7y ago
        To be clear, I was interpreting the abundance of Swift frameworks as proof of it being written in Swift, not as something bad (a ton of Swift frameworks is still a lot better than Chromium + node + a ton of npm packages) I'm curious why they didn't use Xamarin.Mac though, they could have shared a lot of code between apps.
        dean177 7y ago
        The Mac version came first and later they decided to port it to windows.
nailer 7y ago
I moved to Fork from Sourcetree a few weeks ago. - This really is much faster than SourceTree (I have a surface Go and CPU is important to me). My entire machine feels faster. It's entirely possible this is due to ST doing a whole bunch of unnecessary work rather than Fork being good though. - Unlike Tower (and like ST) it has a separate staging area Didn't try anything else asides from ST, Tower and Fork because the rest don't even seem to be capable of interactive rebase, which is essential for a good commit history.
rsp1984 7y ago
On the plus side I find Fork to be performant and clean. I prefer it over Kraken and Tower and I find it vastly better than SourceTree. I also find it somewhat similar to GitX-dev on the Mac, which is a good thing. On the minus side (and it's a big minus), it's not open source. As a developer of commercial software I basically have to trust the Fork developers not to do anything fishy with all the source code / IP that I am opening up to the app.
- jjuel 7y ago
  Aren't all the other ones you mention closed source as well? Like Kraken and SourceTree for sure.
  - sbarre 7y ago
    Sourcetree is provided by Atlassian, a large well-known company. Fork is made by one person. Not making any assumptions here, but if you're evaluating risks around compromises in one of the two products, I think Fork is higher risk.
    - tigroferoce 7y ago
      Moreover, the business model of Sourcetree is somehow clear: attract users to BitBucket, and, hence, to Atlassian. The business model of Fork is unknown, so to me it's a clear no-no. Can't afford to put a tool in my workflow not knowing if in a few months it will become yet another service I must subscribe to
      - EGreg 7y ago
        What’s an open source app for github? Can’t we run gitlab on a local server?
        tigroferoce 7y ago
        GitHub has a very specific business model and yes, you can run gitlab on your local server.
nichos 7y ago
I love git extensions [0]. It's definitely not as pretty, but it's open source and very powerful. Development is very active too. Devs is happy to take PRs. [0] https://gitextensions.github.io/ https://gitextensions.github.io/
MrGilbert 7y ago
Hm... Looks nice so far, except for the Google Analytics call upon startup. Would love to see an option to disable it - and you should add a privacy policy, if you keep it in your application. Other then that, it doesn't seem to send anything else.
- cridenour 7y ago
  It looks like you can, under Preferences -> Updates.
  - ukyrgf 7y ago
    Ah, not an option in the Windows version. I wonder how else they differ.
pknopf 7y ago
What technology is it using that prevents it from being available on Linux? I don't like what is currently available.
- leadingthenet 7y ago
  It’s using WPF on Windows and Cocoa on Mac. It doesn’t seem to share much code between them, either.
- jdance 7y ago
  What about Sublime Merge? I think its great, and works great for me on Linux
earthboundkid 7y ago
Once Gitbox stops working in Mac OS, I'm going to have to become Amish.
cr0sh 7y ago
Ok - I haven't read all the comments here; maybe it's been asked and answered, but I'm going to ask anyhow: Is there something like this available for Linux? Even if you have to pay for it? IntelliJ covers most use cases, and I already pay for that, but I have been wanting to move away from it, and I am one of those few who do not like to use the cli much for git, unless there's no other choice (sometimes, that's the case). I honestly don't know why such a tool doesn't seem to exist. Parts of it do exist (or did - not sure about their active state) - but one tool will have one piece, but lack others; and that holds for every tool I've seen so far. One tool or another will lack that one needed piece - back to the command line for it; sigh. It is strange, because as a whole, all the pieces seem like they are there - but for some reason, nobody has taken the time to combine them all. Probably for the same reason why I haven't done it myself: It isn't that interesting, I suppose.
- gpderetta 7y ago
  Magit? Although be aware it is a gateway drug into Emacs.
- justsid 7y ago
  Not Fork, but I just love Sublime Merge. It runs natively on all major OSs and is insanely fast. Plus I can’t go back from that search function, it’s just too good. Might be worth a try?
- Seirdy 7y ago
  Yes! If you're comfortable with a terminal but would rather have a TUI than an CLI, I recommend `tig`[0] or `lazygit`[1]. If you want to launch a separate GUI program in its own window to use git, git-cola[2] isn't too bad. It looks much better than the screenshots make it out to be if you have a good Qt 5 theme (e.g., breeze-dark). I personally prefer separate wrappers for different git commands for two reasons: 1. I like how the modular nature of git encourages me to think. 2. I'd rather not leave my shell just to use git. For that reason, I use `forgit`[3] as a git client on {ba,z}sh. I cannot recommend `forgit` highly enough if you like fuzzy-finders like FZF[4]; my productivity has never been higher. It's the perfect blend of the modularity and composability offered by UNIX philosophy and the benefits of a simple user interface. As a plus, `forgit` integrates well with `diff-so-fancy`[5] (amazing-looking diffs), `bat`, and `emoji-cli`. [0]: https://github.com/jonas/tig https://github.com/jonas/tig [1]: https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit [2]: https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola [3]: https://github.com/wfxr/forgit https://github.com/wfxr/forgit [4]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf [5]: https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy
luxuryballs 7y ago
I’ve been using this after quitting SourceTree due to so many issues I had with handling authentication, especially with Azure DevOps. Now I prefer the Fork interface, it seems to be more functional for things I often need to do during dev work.
jbigelow76 7y ago
So everybody's bitching about the license aside... :) This sure looks like a really nicely designed git client, congrats to the team on the release!
Tiktaalik 7y ago
As a game industry git newbie that was used to the Perforce client for managing versioning and visualizing changes, this app has been a huge blessing to me.
tiku 7y ago
I need a nice git client for Linux..
TooCleverByHalf 7y ago
Does Fork support integrations with self-hosted systems like Github or Gitlab?
wheresvic1 7y ago
Why not linux? :(
therealdrag0 7y ago
Interesting how similar it is to SourceTree, even down to having Custom Actions.
icodestuff 7y ago
I had Fork 1.0.19. Wasn't any good back then. Just reopened and updated it. Much better now!
goblin89 7y ago
I’ll compare Fork with GitUp (https://gitup.co https://gitup.co) on macOS. A big advantage of Fork is a better merging experience. Personally, I use GitUp in conjunction with CLI when I do rebases, which implies higher mental overhead. Overall, Fork’s UI feels a fair bit slower to use compared to GitUp, both in terms of raw performance and design. For example, after selecting a commit, details take about half a second to load in the bottom pane, and expanding a diff from there takes a precision click. (The Changes subpane offers another diff view, but it requires to select a single changed file first and takes a half-second until file’s diff appears.) GitUp is blazing-fast, has very focused UI, and further speeds up your workflow with well-thought keyboard shortcuts that cover pretty much all available functionality. Platform integrations in Fork might make sense to someone, though to me it’s a concern. It supports GitHub and Bitbucket—what about Gitlab? Unless you monetize, I doubt you can integrate with everything, maintain each integration as their APIs evolve, and still spare enough effort on improving the core UI.
- UIZealot 7y ago
  Both seem to work pretty well, if only I could actually use them. My aging eyes just can't deal with all the gray text on a white background in Fork, or the tiny text in GitUp. Sigh!
  - strogonoff 7y ago
    Someone is currently maintaining a fork of GitUp that adds a text size slider in preferences. On the other hand, maintainer’s response is a bit disheartening suggesting they have not (yet) encountered the eyesight issue themselves. See this feature request: https://github.com/git-up/GitUp/issues/470 https://github.com/git-up/GitUp/issues/470
    - UIZealot 7y ago
      Thanks for the link! Disheartening indeed. Found the fork at the end of that thread, and I'll give it a try.
mstaoru 7y ago
Is there such thing as "remote git"? As someone who gave up trying to run Docker under WSL, returning to the warm embrace of Linux on VMWare, I tried most git clients and found them not usable over neither Samba nor NFS share. Console git pseudo-GUIs are pretty good now (lazygit is my workhorse), but I miss the ability to easily scroll around. If a client could support SSH-based workflow with remote git execution, that would solve it for me.
- Const-me 7y ago
  When I develop for arm Linux, I use local git on Windows PC. I share that folder with CIFS, mount on Linux, build and run my stuff from the mounted directory. As a nice side effect, the disk speed is much faster, the PC has fast SSD, target device uses much slower SD card for the system drive.
childintime 7y ago
Bug report: for some reason I initially could not get past the initial "User information" screen. I suspect it may have had to do with the "full name" field, does it perhaps require a space? When I typed with a space on the 2nd try, Finish was enabled. When I then went back and removed the space, it continued enabled. Anyway, I was left with confusion about "username", and I preferred to go with a nick, however that wish was apparently not respected, and why that was was not clarified.
andreif 7y ago
Previous discussion (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382493
hrbf 7y ago
BTW, could we all please stop creating Electron apps and spend time to properly code native, resource-efficient software instead of shipping a full browser engine in every single application?

286 points by archagon 7y ago

SenHeng 7y ago

For Mac users, nothing beats GitUp[0] 0: https://gitup.co https://gitup.co

em-bee 7y ago
could you elaborate how it compares to fork and why it would be better? as someone who is training developers, cross-platform is a critical feature. gitup fails on that. on the other hand it's FOSS, another critical feature for me. fork fails on that one. so it's a tossup, and i probably can't recommend either for those reasons.
amiantos 7y ago
I use GitUp as my primary git client, but I switch to Fork to handle complicated rebasing. Fork’s “interactive rebase” tool is fantastic, if GitUp had it I’d never need to switch away. I actually registered a HN account just to say this about Fork, it’s that helpful to me.
ngrilly 7y ago
I like GitUp, but how do you handle the fact that the map view doesn't show commit messages and dates (like gitk for example)?

archagon 7y ago

Not my work, but this is one of the most impressive Git clients I've extensively used — and it's free. Tons of features, lots of thought put into usability, and fully native. If this were a $50 product, I'd happily pay it, but there's not even a donation link. Just wanted to share!

figiel 7y ago
Is it more impressive than the git command line client? What does it do better?
- KuhlMensch 7y ago
  DISCLAIMER: Obviously some git tasks are just the wrong fit for a GUI, and some git tasks are just not possible. I've not used Fork but I find SourceTree (which looks very similar) MUCH quicker to search for, and build commits from, hunks. I mean perhaps if I really invested in the git tool I could get my speed up, but I don't see the point - I have what I need already in SourceTree. More generally the tree-structure of the git filesystem often lends itself to persistent visualisations e.g. split view graph + branches. Especially when fetching, and the graph automatically re-renders and shows you an unexpected structure. If we are talking about vanilla git - GUIs can be a nice drop in to speed up commit work flows like "checkout that commit I was working approx a dozen commits ago". Being able visually-grep, and then double-click is a bit faster than `git log --pretty=oneline; git checkout SHA"` And finally, and they are a great on-boarding wrapper for users who are new to git. I've had good success unblocking users with very little git experience who are only using a git CLI, by introducing a git GUI. This really flattens out the learning curve, which frees up both devs to concentrate on the _actual_ task at hand.

abc_lisper 7y ago

Yeah, please put a donation link. I would happily pay if I enjoy using it

afarrell 7y ago

Alongside a donation link, you should put a "purchase a license" or "purchase a subscription" link. That way, an engineer can upload the resulting receipt to expensify and get reimbursed by their employer. Employers are used to paying for software licenses out of engineering budgets; Donations would generally come out of a different budget managed by someone an engineer doesn't work with day-to-day.

SyneRyder 7y ago
Another +1 for them adding a price to this. It's a really good program and even as a solo indie developer, I want to give them money so they can afford to keep working on it. Customer support takes time too, I've already emailed them about one bug & used up some minutes of the developer's time. Preferably not a subscription, though. The whole reason I started using Fork is because their competitor Tower switched to a subscription model, so I started looking for competitors. The Fork developers seem keen on keeping it free, so maybe something like the Sublime Text / REAPER model where it has a nag screen on startup but will keep working anyway (useful for us indie developers until the money rolls in). I also like the idea of no internet-based licensing, so if the company ever disappears I can still use the software.
- cyphar 7y ago
  I think the point is that it should remain a free project but put an artificial "price" instead of a donation link. This is similar to what SQLite does (offering a $1000 license, where you're basically paying for a piece of paper saying "no really, you can use this freely").
  - Tomte 7y ago
    Plus the phone number of a developer, with a response 24/7, I think.
    - jakear 7y ago
      Support is actually an entirely different (and much more expensive) concept. Business Hours phone support starts at 8k, but 24/7 phone support costs as much as 85k/year. https://sqlite.org/prosupport.html https://sqlite.org/prosupport.html

mehrdadn 7y ago

What distinguishes it from TortoiseGit on Windows?

yoz-y 7y ago
Judging solely from screenshots I’d say the biggest difference is that it is not a shell extension but a self contained program.
somada141 7y ago
Also it's really helpful if you have heaps of repos and want a centralised view and to quickly switch from one to the other with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+O
gregmac 7y ago
I would describe TortoiseGit as file-centric, while most other git Gui tools (including this, judging by the screenshots) are timeline-centric. With timelines, you are dealing mainly with diffs (what's changed in your working directory, or a commit), and the files involved are just a side effect of that. The files that are unchanged are simply not displayed at all in the UI. This is especially conducive to using the staging area and committing partial files. Tortoise shows you working directory diffs but only if you ask via several clicks (eg, creating a commit). Because you interact via Explorer, every time-based action is hidden behind context menu. IMHO about the only thing easier in tortoise is viewing history or blame on a specific file or directory.

lioeters 7y ago

Happy user of Fork here. I switched a few months ago from SourceTree, as it was getting laggy due to having a large number of repos. Fork is a performant Git GUI client, well-designed with most practical features you could want. It's a native app written separately for macOS and Windows - though they might use their own cross-platform library, I seem to recall reading about it. Anyway, it's excellent software, I'm willing to pay to support development.

latchkey 7y ago

Just downloaded it from the link on the website and the downloaded version was one release behind, which means an immediate ~50meg download again. Please be considerate of people on slow/remote/expensive connections.

bbbobbb 7y ago

Looks nice and clean, although useless for me as a Linux user. The one thing I use graphical git client for is resolving merge issues, so something lightweight is nice. Currently I just do it in IntelliJ and hope I already have the project opened. As a side note, I guess the images on the website are fairly small, but they pay for it with tons of jpeg artifacts which does not look clean.

dmortin 7y ago
> Looks nice and clean, although useless for me as a Linux user. That's why Electron GUIs are good. People say they are bloated, but at least the program is available for Linux as well.
- tarasmatsyk 7y ago
  Even in SE field Linux market is small, that was one of the reasons I've moved out of it as my primary OS
  - realusername 7y ago
    Not for products targeting software engineers, the distributions of systems looks very different from the general public and Linux is very common.
- stephenr 7y ago
  So we’re all forced to use shit apps? No thanks. I imagine the number of Linux desktop using developers who use git and want a git GUI is numbering in the hundreds, worldwide.
  - alexeiz 7y ago
    > numbering in the hundreds So like 50% of total Linux desktop users? Haha, just kidding. I, for myself, use tig and git command line and I'm pretty happy with it.

radicalriddler 7y ago

From a brief use, it looks good, definitely a lot faster than something like Gitkraken. I'll be happy to see where you guys take this project.

somada141 7y ago

Just downloaded it cause SourceTree has been getting slower and more temperamental over time. Seems fantastic and very fast thus far, I'll be testing it more extensively over the coming weeks and might well switch to this. Beautiful work!

somada141 7y ago
Also would love a GitFlow integration like the one you get in SourceTree [1] or Tower [2]. [1] https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-with-sourcetree-and-git-flow/ https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-wi... [2] https://www.git-tower.com/help/win/integration/git-flow https://www.git-tower.com/help/win/integration/git-flow
somada141 7y ago
Been using it for work and my first 'request' would be to add the "commit message recall" that SourceTree offers, a feature I always missed in Tower. With it I can make small commits individually (eg "added new CRUD resource-class for users") and then recall the last message and make minor changes (eg changing "users" to "posts", "comments", etc). I might be alone in loving this feature though :D

pjtr 7y ago

Why do merge tools pretend that "their" and "our" or "remote" and "local" are good labels? Can they not show the commit message and hash? Nowadays with history editing often both sides are local and mine.

frizkie 7y ago
And then they get misspelled as "their's" and "our's".
jmiserez 7y ago
Did you see the screenshots? Looks like it shows the branches at least.
- pjtr 7y ago
  I did see the screenshots. That's what triggered my comment. I did not see any branch names. Now I see "nh-scroll-fix" and "origin/fix-simulate-na..." in the conflict dialog, but not in the merge dialog. Branch names seem insufficient anyway though, but it would be a slight improvement I guess.
adrianmsmith 7y ago
And, on the command-line at least, "theirs" and "ours" are reversed (only) for "rebase" [1] so that means, at least for me, I have to mentally ask myself "are theirs/ours reversed for this command?" for every command I execute, they might as well be called "foo" and "bar" at this point for me. [1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase#Documentation/git-rebase.txt---merge https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase#Documentation/git-rebase...

tarasmatsyk 7y ago

I've discovered Fork by looking at my teammate's screen :D I am very skeptical about any git UI especially anything out of my IDE as switching windows distracts me. However, after trying it a bit: - it works and looks much better than SourceTree, GitKraken - it's free (while I would prefer using a Sublime license model if asked) - it has GitFlow integration (not a big fan of it, however it gives you a git workflow template out of the box, worth checking) Thank you, Dan and Tanya, for the hard work!

radres 7y ago

I wish it worked on linux

cyberferret 7y ago

Problems with BitBucket? Trying to sign on to BB after downloading and keep getting the error "Could not parse error json data".

petters 7y ago

Does it run precommits that have keyboard interactions? We use that a lot and Sublime Merge does not work.

josteink 7y ago

Quick feedback to whoever maintains the web-page. I'm looking at the introduction, the screenshots and all looks nice. Then at the bottom of the screen I get the text "Download Fork for Mac", and nothing else. No Windows-download. Had the headline on HN not been explicit about there being a Windows-version, I wouldn't have gone looking... And therefore not found the tiny "For for Windows" navigation item on top of the page. I would have assume this was Mac only and left. Any reason you different pages, and particularly why you don't show both download links on the bottom of the screen? I'm pretty sure you're at risk of missing 99% of the potential Windows-users skimming by this page.

ukyrgf 7y ago
It's definitely Mac-centric. Mac in all the screenshots. Mac link in the menu has a blue border to make it stand out and the Windows one doesn't. Like you said, the bottom of the homepage is a link to download the Mac version. Release notes are all for Mac, no Windows. The blog talks about "Fork", which is a Mac app, and then a separate "Fork for Windows".

jlis 7y ago

I use Fork on work and also private. Great software. One of the main reasons to switch is the merge/conflict view, which is, at least in my opinion, one of the best out there. Previously I've used Sourcetree and SmartGit, and even some Git integration in PHPStorm/WebStorm. But for now, Fork is just lit. If I could I just wish for one thing: mark branches which are only local and have no remote, so you can easily purge old branches after they're merged.

jmiserez 7y ago
>mark branches which are only local and have no remote, so you can easily purge old branches after they're merged. git fetch --prune EDIT: Then you can see which ones don't exist on the remote git branch -v which will show [gone] if it's a tracked branch but the corresponding upstream branch isn't there anymore. Use -vv to show the upstream branch names as well. See: - https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch#_pruning https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch#_pruning - https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch https://git-scm.com/docs/git-fetch
- uasi 7y ago
  git fetch --prune removes stale remote-tracking references, not local branches.
  - jmiserez 7y ago
    You are right. I've updated my comment above and added a second step which shows which branches can be removed.
Bootwizard 7y ago
Better than BeyondCompare?

bdreadz 7y ago

Highly recommend. Switched after another developer at my office mentioned it. I suggested the filter active branch hot key and it was added I believe in less than a week. Comes out of the box with a great dark mode. The way you can view the commits diffs in the program is wonderful as well. It's the one thing I didn't like about git kraken. Which I even had suggested that they add a different view for that and I would have purchased for my whole team. Take a look at this one. The ability to jump between branches is great with command B. Keep up the good work. Like people have already mention please make a donate button as I'll gladly donate to encourage the continued work.

ebr4him 7y ago

10/10 Would use again. I'm a lurker but had to comment on this. A great app that I use daily and can't believe its free.

groundCode 7y ago

As someone pretty comfortable with got on the command line, what advantages would a GUI give me? I’m not trolling, it’s an honest question. Anyone with good got command line skills move to something like this and find it offers them a better workflow?

rado 7y ago
Multiple repos visible at a glance
Bootwizard 7y ago
Basically, in GUIs the most common commands are represented in UI, and some combined into a single action. Also, visually viewing the entire tree (not sure the name for the entire branching structure) can be helpful to debugging and fixing issues caused by merging, accidental overwrites, etc. The disadvantages are: - cherry picking commits is not easy - lacks advanced (read uncommon) commands - sometimes git errors are encountered that can only be solved with command line anyways It's also way easier to onboard junior engineers who haven't used version control before.
- OJFord 7y ago
  > visually viewing the entire tree [branching structure] You can do that with git CLI no problem, it's one of my most used aliases (so I can't recall exactly the underlying command) - just flags to log. --pretty=oneline --all --decorate is the key bit iirc. While I'm at it, my hands down most used alias is 'fixup', which takes a ref, commits with message 'fixup! <ref>' and rebases with whatever flag makes it turn that into 'fixup' instead of 'pick' automatically. i.e. it's commit --amend for older commits. Recently I added fzsha and fzfile too, which use fzf to fuzzy find a SHA/file, and call the git command given as $1 with it and any other supplied args. So git fzfile add stages whatever I choose in fzf, and likewise git fzsha fixup amends a fuzzy-found commit. These GUIs look pretty, but I've no desire to learn one when it inevitably misses some things I use frequently, and adds new features I don't have, sure, but no (quick, maybe it's open source and .. sure) way of adding my own.

rado 7y ago

Thanks for ridding me of GitHub Desktop’s Electron bloat on Mac. Native apps, please come back.

4di 7y ago

Fork is awesome. I've been using Windows for the past year for a project and missed GitUp on Mac. After trying a few clients (Tower, SourceTree, Kraken, and a few others) I stayed with Fork - very fast, performant, and intuitive. Right now I have about 15 repo tabs open in Fork with a large number of branches in each. The tree view is excellent (I actually liked the older one-line-per-entry version). Fork recently added the ability to compare branches - literally click two times to get a diff within half a second. I really can't believe this app is free. Well done to the makers of this excellent app!

gabrielizaias 7y ago

Does is support signing commits? I can't tell form the website. I usually go for the command line and only reach for a GUI if I made a lot of changes that should be committed separately and Github Desktop doesn't work with signed commits at all.

MarkSweep 7y ago

The license prohibits all kinds of things so I am not comfortable using it: https://fork.dev/license https://fork.dev/license Specifically, it says: * "You will not use this Software to engage in or allow others to engage in any illegal activity.": Which jurisdiction? how far do I have to go to prevent illegal activity? * "You will not engage in using this Software that will interfere with or damage the operation of the services of any third parties[...]" How is this defined? How quickly can I push the "git pull" button before I violate this term? * "You will not use this Software to engage in any activity that will violate the rights of third parties, including, without limitation, [...]" again, which jurisdiction?

hnarn 7y ago
What a silly license. Why do people insist on rolling their own? It's quite amazing to me, especially when it comes to things like cryptography and legal texts. Surely any lawyer could point at these phrases and say what you're saying now -- how do you define this? Sure, you could argue that keeping it vague is a way to protect the authors, but I'd argue that a competent lawyer would write it in a less vague way, to protect the authors even more -- if it was necessary. Is it? I doubt it, considering the type of software we see under insanely brief licenses like the MIT.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  The MIT license is extremely permissive. It's a stupid measuring post for comparison, because it basically doesn't say anything at all. Yes, they could have consulted with and paid a lawyer to tighten up the wording. But unless you either own a company, or intend to use this in consulting work, I don't think this license should bother you at all. The intent and general meaning are pretty clear, even if you could argue over the definition of one word or another.
mikekchar 7y ago
I can answer one of your questions: "This agreement shall be governed by the laws of Czeck Republic. If any portion of this Agreement is deemed unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, it shall not affect the forcibility of the other portions of this Agreement." Though, this license is pretty much radioactive for me: "You will not, and will not permit others to reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works from this Software..." Fair enough if you want to use whatever license you want to use, but definitely a "no thanks" from me...

srikz 7y ago

This looks neat! It will be great to have a Linux version in the future. I’m not too hopeful as this seems to be made native to the platforms (and very well!) by experienced native devs. Maybe, the app becomes very popular and there will eventually be a Linux version of such good quality.

duckfruit 7y ago

Amazing, well crafted piece of software. I wonder how they can afford to build and maintain it for free.

Spacemolte 7y ago

The whole, if the product is free you are the product etc. So, how is this free? It really does look amazing, which is probably why I wonder how it can be free.

somethingnot 7y ago
Git is also free. So, how are you the product when you use git?
- RussianCow 7y ago
  Git is open source and a community project; Fork is closed source and developed by two people.
archagon 7y ago
Not everything aims to be a "product", I suppose.

fishnchips 7y ago

This is pretty awesome, thanks for working on that! At the moment I'm struggling a bit trying to figure out how to use GPG. My Git profile is set up to require signed commits and the website claims this is supported, but it's at least not obvious how to do that.

Kipters 7y ago

It looks like it's a WPF app on Windows and a Cocoa app (via Xamarin.Mac) on macOS. It feels good to not try something based on Electron for once.

lostmsu 7y ago
I wonder if they used a cross platform library abstracting the two.
- Kipters 7y ago
  It looks like I was wrong: the macOS version has lots of Swift frameworks inside of it and no hints of Xamarin, they appear to be two completely separate apps
  - rvz 7y ago
    So essentially: Mac app written with Cocoa/ObjC/Swift and the Windows app written with C# and WPF. A great example of native software. I'd prefer something like Fork over something like GitKraken IMHO. I cannot imagine the performance of some electron alternatives if I were to open a repository with 200k commits, but this can be resolved with shallow cloning. Even if it has lots of Swift frameworks embedded, as soon as they switch to Swift 5 and Mojave and higher, Swift will become built in with no dylibs.
    - Kipters 7y ago
      To be clear, I was interpreting the abundance of Swift frameworks as proof of it being written in Swift, not as something bad (a ton of Swift frameworks is still a lot better than Chromium + node + a ton of npm packages) I'm curious why they didn't use Xamarin.Mac though, they could have shared a lot of code between apps.
      - dean177 7y ago
        The Mac version came first and later they decided to port it to windows.

nailer 7y ago

I moved to Fork from Sourcetree a few weeks ago. - This really is much faster than SourceTree (I have a surface Go and CPU is important to me). My entire machine feels faster. It's entirely possible this is due to ST doing a whole bunch of unnecessary work rather than Fork being good though. - Unlike Tower (and like ST) it has a separate staging area Didn't try anything else asides from ST, Tower and Fork because the rest don't even seem to be capable of interactive rebase, which is essential for a good commit history.

rsp1984 7y ago

On the plus side I find Fork to be performant and clean. I prefer it over Kraken and Tower and I find it vastly better than SourceTree. I also find it somewhat similar to GitX-dev on the Mac, which is a good thing. On the minus side (and it's a big minus), it's not open source. As a developer of commercial software I basically have to trust the Fork developers not to do anything fishy with all the source code / IP that I am opening up to the app.

jjuel 7y ago
Aren't all the other ones you mention closed source as well? Like Kraken and SourceTree for sure.
- sbarre 7y ago
  Sourcetree is provided by Atlassian, a large well-known company. Fork is made by one person. Not making any assumptions here, but if you're evaluating risks around compromises in one of the two products, I think Fork is higher risk.
  - tigroferoce 7y ago
    Moreover, the business model of Sourcetree is somehow clear: attract users to BitBucket, and, hence, to Atlassian. The business model of Fork is unknown, so to me it's a clear no-no. Can't afford to put a tool in my workflow not knowing if in a few months it will become yet another service I must subscribe to
    - EGreg 7y ago
      What’s an open source app for github? Can’t we run gitlab on a local server?
      - tigroferoce 7y ago
        GitHub has a very specific business model and yes, you can run gitlab on your local server.

nichos 7y ago

I love git extensions [0]. It's definitely not as pretty, but it's open source and very powerful. Development is very active too. Devs is happy to take PRs. [0] https://gitextensions.github.io/ https://gitextensions.github.io/

MrGilbert 7y ago

Hm... Looks nice so far, except for the Google Analytics call upon startup. Would love to see an option to disable it - and you should add a privacy policy, if you keep it in your application. Other then that, it doesn't seem to send anything else.

cridenour 7y ago
It looks like you can, under Preferences -> Updates.
- ukyrgf 7y ago
  Ah, not an option in the Windows version. I wonder how else they differ.

pknopf 7y ago

What technology is it using that prevents it from being available on Linux? I don't like what is currently available.

leadingthenet 7y ago
It’s using WPF on Windows and Cocoa on Mac. It doesn’t seem to share much code between them, either.
jdance 7y ago
What about Sublime Merge? I think its great, and works great for me on Linux

earthboundkid 7y ago

Once Gitbox stops working in Mac OS, I'm going to have to become Amish.

cr0sh 7y ago

Ok - I haven't read all the comments here; maybe it's been asked and answered, but I'm going to ask anyhow: Is there something like this available for Linux? Even if you have to pay for it? IntelliJ covers most use cases, and I already pay for that, but I have been wanting to move away from it, and I am one of those few who do not like to use the cli much for git, unless there's no other choice (sometimes, that's the case). I honestly don't know why such a tool doesn't seem to exist. Parts of it do exist (or did - not sure about their active state) - but one tool will have one piece, but lack others; and that holds for every tool I've seen so far. One tool or another will lack that one needed piece - back to the command line for it; sigh. It is strange, because as a whole, all the pieces seem like they are there - but for some reason, nobody has taken the time to combine them all. Probably for the same reason why I haven't done it myself: It isn't that interesting, I suppose.

gpderetta 7y ago
Magit? Although be aware it is a gateway drug into Emacs.
justsid 7y ago
Not Fork, but I just love Sublime Merge. It runs natively on all major OSs and is insanely fast. Plus I can’t go back from that search function, it’s just too good. Might be worth a try?
Seirdy 7y ago
Yes! If you're comfortable with a terminal but would rather have a TUI than an CLI, I recommend `tig`[0] or `lazygit`[1]. If you want to launch a separate GUI program in its own window to use git, git-cola[2] isn't too bad. It looks much better than the screenshots make it out to be if you have a good Qt 5 theme (e.g., breeze-dark). I personally prefer separate wrappers for different git commands for two reasons: 1. I like how the modular nature of git encourages me to think. 2. I'd rather not leave my shell just to use git. For that reason, I use `forgit`[3] as a git client on {ba,z}sh. I cannot recommend `forgit` highly enough if you like fuzzy-finders like FZF[4]; my productivity has never been higher. It's the perfect blend of the modularity and composability offered by UNIX philosophy and the benefits of a simple user interface. As a plus, `forgit` integrates well with `diff-so-fancy`[5] (amazing-looking diffs), `bat`, and `emoji-cli`. [0]: https://github.com/jonas/tig https://github.com/jonas/tig [1]: https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit [2]: https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola [3]: https://github.com/wfxr/forgit https://github.com/wfxr/forgit [4]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf [5]: https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy

luxuryballs 7y ago

I’ve been using this after quitting SourceTree due to so many issues I had with handling authentication, especially with Azure DevOps. Now I prefer the Fork interface, it seems to be more functional for things I often need to do during dev work.

jbigelow76 7y ago

So everybody's bitching about the license aside... :) This sure looks like a really nicely designed git client, congrats to the team on the release!

Tiktaalik 7y ago

As a game industry git newbie that was used to the Perforce client for managing versioning and visualizing changes, this app has been a huge blessing to me.

tiku 7y ago

I need a nice git client for Linux..

TooCleverByHalf 7y ago

Does Fork support integrations with self-hosted systems like Github or Gitlab?

wheresvic1 7y ago

Why not linux? :(

therealdrag0 7y ago

Interesting how similar it is to SourceTree, even down to having Custom Actions.

icodestuff 7y ago

I had Fork 1.0.19. Wasn't any good back then. Just reopened and updated it. Much better now!

goblin89 7y ago

I’ll compare Fork with GitUp (https://gitup.co https://gitup.co) on macOS. A big advantage of Fork is a better merging experience. Personally, I use GitUp in conjunction with CLI when I do rebases, which implies higher mental overhead. Overall, Fork’s UI feels a fair bit slower to use compared to GitUp, both in terms of raw performance and design. For example, after selecting a commit, details take about half a second to load in the bottom pane, and expanding a diff from there takes a precision click. (The Changes subpane offers another diff view, but it requires to select a single changed file first and takes a half-second until file’s diff appears.) GitUp is blazing-fast, has very focused UI, and further speeds up your workflow with well-thought keyboard shortcuts that cover pretty much all available functionality. Platform integrations in Fork might make sense to someone, though to me it’s a concern. It supports GitHub and Bitbucket—what about Gitlab? Unless you monetize, I doubt you can integrate with everything, maintain each integration as their APIs evolve, and still spare enough effort on improving the core UI.

UIZealot 7y ago
Both seem to work pretty well, if only I could actually use them. My aging eyes just can't deal with all the gray text on a white background in Fork, or the tiny text in GitUp. Sigh!
- strogonoff 7y ago
  Someone is currently maintaining a fork of GitUp that adds a text size slider in preferences. On the other hand, maintainer’s response is a bit disheartening suggesting they have not (yet) encountered the eyesight issue themselves. See this feature request: https://github.com/git-up/GitUp/issues/470 https://github.com/git-up/GitUp/issues/470
  - UIZealot 7y ago
    Thanks for the link! Disheartening indeed. Found the fork at the end of that thread, and I'll give it a try.

mstaoru 7y ago

Is there such thing as "remote git"? As someone who gave up trying to run Docker under WSL, returning to the warm embrace of Linux on VMWare, I tried most git clients and found them not usable over neither Samba nor NFS share. Console git pseudo-GUIs are pretty good now (lazygit is my workhorse), but I miss the ability to easily scroll around. If a client could support SSH-based workflow with remote git execution, that would solve it for me.

Const-me 7y ago
When I develop for arm Linux, I use local git on Windows PC. I share that folder with CIFS, mount on Linux, build and run my stuff from the mounted directory. As a nice side effect, the disk speed is much faster, the PC has fast SSD, target device uses much slower SD card for the system drive.

childintime 7y ago

Bug report: for some reason I initially could not get past the initial "User information" screen. I suspect it may have had to do with the "full name" field, does it perhaps require a space? When I typed with a space on the 2nd try, Finish was enabled. When I then went back and removed the space, it continued enabled. Anyway, I was left with confusion about "username", and I preferred to go with a nick, however that wish was apparently not respected, and why that was was not clarified.

andreif 7y ago

Previous discussion (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382493

hrbf 7y ago

BTW, could we all please stop creating Electron apps and spend time to properly code native, resource-efficient software instead of shipping a full browser engine in every single application?