4 ms·

Git is so simple that you don't need a gui for the normal day-to-day stuff. And if you are fighting with the complex stuff, you are probably doing it wrong. Th

Git is so simple that you don't need a gui for the normal day-to-day stuff. And if you are fighting with the complex stuff, you are probably doing it wrong. Then no GUI in the world can help you.

wkz 7y ago
Not sure if it qualifies as a GUI, but I’ve found magit increases my productivity with git.
rumanator 7y ago
> Git is so simple that you don't need a gui for the normal day-to-day stuff. It really depends on what you mean by day-to-day operations. If all you do is checkout code, create ephemeral branches that either get deleted or are merged into another low-traffic branch or are simply pushed to a remote git workflow system, sure you don't need a GUI for that. But if you need to traverse branch history and compare changes and do three-way merges and audit changes and track logs to a specific file within a repo... You are far better off with a GUI.
- panpanna 7y ago
  But how many fall into the second category? 5% of all users?
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    On the other hand, I haven't been in the first category since I was unemployed and only worked on side-projects. Once I worked with teams, I started encountering things like difficult merges, long-running divergent branches, etc. that make GUI useful. If there are more people in the first category, it's only because anyone can start a solo repo but only a subset of people work on teams. Either way, who cares? Use what is useful to you. Throughout these comments is this weird assertion that other people are using the wrong tool unlike us enlightened HNers. It's like people get offended that others prefer other tools. As if it's like "What, is my cli git preference not good enough for them?!" I'm low-key convinced that's what's actually going on in all these cross-examinations.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Quite a lot more users .. but not every day or even every month.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > But how many fall into the second category? Everyone who has to fix bugs and maintain software?
    - recursive 7y ago
      It's possible to do it without, so no.
  - maccard 7y ago
    I'd estimate that most of my time interacting with SCM (I use perforce) is spent looking at history and diffing/merging, rather than checking out/creating branches. Checking out is so simple that it doesn't matter whether you use a GUI or not.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Git's internal model is fairly simple. Git's CLI is a toxic dumpster fire. What makes it usable is that 95% of the time you only need 5% of the CLI, and that 5% -- while nonsensical -- is small enough to memorize.

Git is so simple that you don't need a gui for the normal day-to-day stuff. And if you are fighting with the complex stuff, you are probably doing it wrong. Then no GUI in the world can help you.

wkz 7y ago

Not sure if it qualifies as a GUI, but I’ve found magit increases my productivity with git.

rumanator 7y ago

> Git is so simple that you don't need a gui for the normal day-to-day stuff. It really depends on what you mean by day-to-day operations. If all you do is checkout code, create ephemeral branches that either get deleted or are merged into another low-traffic branch or are simply pushed to a remote git workflow system, sure you don't need a GUI for that. But if you need to traverse branch history and compare changes and do three-way merges and audit changes and track logs to a specific file within a repo... You are far better off with a GUI.

panpanna 7y ago
But how many fall into the second category? 5% of all users?
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  On the other hand, I haven't been in the first category since I was unemployed and only worked on side-projects. Once I worked with teams, I started encountering things like difficult merges, long-running divergent branches, etc. that make GUI useful. If there are more people in the first category, it's only because anyone can start a solo repo but only a subset of people work on teams. Either way, who cares? Use what is useful to you. Throughout these comments is this weird assertion that other people are using the wrong tool unlike us enlightened HNers. It's like people get offended that others prefer other tools. As if it's like "What, is my cli git preference not good enough for them?!" I'm low-key convinced that's what's actually going on in all these cross-examinations.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Quite a lot more users .. but not every day or even every month.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > But how many fall into the second category? Everyone who has to fix bugs and maintain software?
  - recursive 7y ago
    It's possible to do it without, so no.
- maccard 7y ago
  I'd estimate that most of my time interacting with SCM (I use perforce) is spent looking at history and diffing/merging, rather than checking out/creating branches. Checking out is so simple that it doesn't matter whether you use a GUI or not.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Git's internal model is fairly simple. Git's CLI is a toxic dumpster fire. What makes it usable is that 95% of the time you only need 5% of the CLI, and that 5% -- while nonsensical -- is small enough to memorize.