9 ms·

GitQlient – a multi-platform GUI-oriented Git client written with Qt

170 points by app4soft 7y ago

stevebmark 7y ago
This looks cool. I'm curious if people use Git's tree view, in any form, as part of the regular workflow? If so, how? I have never found it useful, intuitive, or usually readable / parsable. Not the graph drawn on the command line, certainly not Github's tree view GUI of forked projects. I've also only ever worked on a project with one or two main trunk branches (master, and maybe dev), and feature branches, and very little merging between other arbitrary branches.
- apocalyptic0n3 7y ago
  I use it frequently. I work mostly solo but am often force to jump around quite a bit. So I use a variation of GitLab Flow[1] and often have dozens of active feature branches going on. It's useful seeing where a branch was created against develop so I can have some idea of what's been done on that branch since I last worked on the branch I just switched to, and what to expect when I merge or rebase. [1]: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/gitlab_flow.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/gitlab_flow.html
- juped 7y ago
  If you mean the history graph, try gitk (part of the git distribution, but you may need to install a separate git-x11 or similar package).
- _ZeD_ 7y ago
  Onestly, I always found all git interfaces (gui or text based) from just ugly and useless to totally counterintuitive. With one exception: the only good git ui that I tolerate for its clearance is the eclipse egit plugin https://www.eclipse.org/egit/ https://www.eclipse.org/egit/
- gregmac 7y ago
  At work, we use feature branching extensively, and there's often somewhere between 3 and 6 active feature branches at any time. The graph view is a good way to keep track of what's going on overall, if you're watching it regularly and branch parents are within a screen or two). Just earlier today I was working on testing a new feature that depended on 3 other independent fixes (basically, bugs found while I was building the feature). I did the fixes each as an independent branch, so I could get them in faster (before my new feature is done) plus to make the code review easier. The tree view is invaluable in testing my new feature to be sure I've merged the right fixes and am doing changes in the right branches. I also use it very occasionally to isolate if and/or why a particular fix got into a specific release branch (or not). I think there's probably better ways to do this (eg using bisect) but I do it so rarely I haven't bothered to learn.
- Legogris 7y ago
  I use it as part of my daily flow. One example: I work on a feature, which necessitates some refactoring, maybe upgrading a dependency, and oh, while I'm in the middle of it I notice some other, unrelated things, that need changing. In order to not have to break my flow and think too much about which changes are required for what, I just commit it all on the same local branch. This then gets broken up into different branches in individual PRs.
  - stevebmark 7y ago
    I don't understand what this has to do with a visual view of branches and merges
    - Legogris 7y ago
      It certainly helps me when splitting, comparing and picking changes between branches. Also to keep track of how upstreams have changed compared to my working branch before doing rebases. Oh, and re Githubs fork view (which could be improved on the UI side), is helpful when seeing if anyone else has picked up the ball on unmaintained repos. If you don't find it useful, fine, I don't think we all need to grok each others personal workflows and motivate them to each other? Maybe you can compare it to a visual file manager that visualizes your directory structure as a tree; some people find it a necessity to get an overview of their file system, some don't.
ktpsns 7y ago
The tree looks nice. Similar to gitk, sourcetree or bitbucket. For whatever reason, github and gitlab cannot manage to get a similiar clean vertical git tree view.
speedgoose 7y ago
The link's layout is broken on mobile.
pjmlp 7y ago
Nice, good job, specially for going with Qt instead of Electron.
- ericol 7y ago
  EVen thought I understand the bashing Electron gets, it doesn't seem that Qt is the right choice right now. I tried to test the software: Needed Qt as there are no releases, but Qt is behind a paywall, and according to a previous post here in HN [1] it seems they resorted back to tactics they already reckoned (In 2015) were not good. I guess I'll just have to wait until the page has the releases ready. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821050
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    > but Qt is behind a paywall, apt install qtbase5-dev / brew install qt / whatever works just fine here. if you are on windows and absolutely want the official releases : pip install aqtinstall python -m aqt install 5.14.2 windows desktop win64_msvc2017_64 -O c:/Qt/
    - ericol 7y ago
      Cheers. I'm on debian 10 and that didn't work, but I suspect it's something to do with my current installation that complains about a missing Qt4 software even after installing that (That I'll research when I have the time).
      - jcelerier 7y ago
        Likely. sudo docker run -it debian:10 apt update apt install qtbase5-dev build-essential g++-8 qt5-qmake qt5-default git git clone --recursive -j16 https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient mkdir build && cd build qmake ../GitQlient && make -j16 seems to produce a build without errors here
  - app4soft 7y ago
    > I tried to test the software: Needed Qt as there are no releases This is not true! There are releases, and especially for Linux it already packaged as AppImage (portable package).[0] [0] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/releases https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/releases
W0lf 7y ago
Is anyone aware of a publicly available code base to look into when searching for high quality Qt-based (desktop) applications? Think chromium-quality software quality code base. I am looking for inspiring patterns and also things such as naming schemes as I regularly change my mind when it comes to developing Qt based applications with regard to: - naming things (e.g. should signals/slots be prefixed (sigFoo() -> onFooBared()) - how to deal with signal functions actually not implemented (clang-tidy warnings) - how to break up large main window classes in a reasonable manner and so on. Typically I immerse myself in one of the larger code bases I'm aware of (Android, Firefox, Chromium, Tensorflow, and some others) and regularly discover pretty useful patterns I can make use of. However, I was unlucky to find something for Qt based.
- zwieback 7y ago
  You could look at KDE, I don't know about the quality but it's a big enough public effort that it should be well reviewed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Projects
- hoistbypetard 7y ago
  The KDE applications would seem like a good place to start. https://kde.org/applications/office https://kde.org/applications/office
- ynezz 7y ago
  Qt itself, like for example https://github.com/qt/qttools https://github.com/qt/qttools?
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    Good suggestion. Code snippets showing the naming style they use: connect(contextShortcut, SIGNAL(activated()), this, SLOT(showContextDock())); connect(m_messageView->selectionModel(), SIGNAL(currentColumnChanged(QModelIndex,QModelIndex)), SLOT(updateLatestModel(QModelIndex))); Taken from https://github.com/qt/qttools/blob/7ec161d6f/src/linguist/linguist/mainwindow.cpp https://github.com/qt/qttools/blob/7ec161d6f/src/linguist/li...
lindgrenj6 7y ago
This looks amazing! Looks almost as slick as GitKraken, without requiring all of my RAM+1GB to run. Great work! I'll be recommending this to anyone who is looking for a git GUI client.
- app4soft 7y ago
  JFTR, Also take a look on Guitar[0] - another Qt-based Git GUI client. I actually use Guitar, but GitQlient is also installed on my PC. [0] https://github.com/soramimi/Guitar https://github.com/soramimi/Guitar
  - potiuper 7y ago
    What does GitQlient do that Guitar, QGit, CodeReview, GitAhead, or git-cola do not?
    - francescmm 7y ago
      I can open multiple repositories at the same time in the same screen. I actually forked from QGit becuase I was missing a lot of functionality and inactivity in the UI. I couldn't find a way to do that in QGit and GitAhead at least. I didn't try the others.
chris-c-thomas 7y ago
How would I get this to run on MacOS?
- ericol 7y ago
  There are no releases for the software yet, so you need Qt in order to compile it. Check out the "Build" section on the page.
- qaz_plm 7y ago
  Should be able to download the .app release from here https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/index.md#appendix-a-releases https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/ind.... Looks to be build instructions as well in appendix b on the same page.
  - mikewhy 7y ago
    Sadly, if you follow the link to the releases section, there is no release for macOS.
- wheels 7y ago
  You can install Qt with HomeBrew, and then building (I did it) is just: $ qmake && make Then you'll get a GitQlient.app.
red_admiral 7y ago
Tried this on win10: it seems to crash without an error message when I try and open a repository.
- app4soft 7y ago
  Please, report bugs to developer.[0] [0] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues
- francescmm 7y ago
  As @app4soft said, please open an issue and attach as many logs you can: https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues To be fair, in windows the performance is quite low due to Git Bash performance as well. I need to improve that :)
slezyr 7y ago
Looks really close to Sublime Merge[1], which is great. 1: https://www.sublimemerge.com/ https://www.sublimemerge.com/
- kennydude 7y ago
  After seeing quite a few new Git clients, Sublime Merge is still, imho, the easiest to use
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    i find magit even better, but of the non-emacs gits porcelains, smerge is way at the top of the heap.
jszymborski 7y ago
Kinda looks like GitAhead, but I'll be sure to give this one a shot. https://gitahead.github.io/gitahead.com/ https://gitahead.github.io/gitahead.com/
pachico 7y ago
This probably the less mobile friendly website I've seen in a while! I'll have to check it in my laptop later on.
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  I had trouble even on a laptop screen!
  - app4soft 7y ago
    I don't know what you talking about, because I has no any issues on laptop.[0] BTW, Alternatively try read docs directly from repo on GitHub.[1] [0] https://i.imgur.com/9wGBlLJ.png https://i.imgur.com/9wGBlLJ.png [1] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/index.md https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/ind...
    - mikewhy 7y ago
      - text straight-up cuts off: https://imgur.com/uYCAxbk https://imgur.com/uYCAxbk - very weird layout: https://imgur.com/3uFfmSW https://imgur.com/3uFfmSW - mobile users may not even see content if they don't scroll left / right after scrolling down a bit: https://imgur.com/UQrKtcy https://imgur.com/UQrKtcy
  - pekim 7y ago
    Unfortunately it's not quite as as good as it could be on a 1928x1080 desktop monitor either. I had to zoom to 170% to make it comfortable to read (my eyesight is not great, but not terrible either). And that introduced horizontal scrolling. So I had to drop back down to 150% zoom.
- francescmm 7y ago
  I'm going to check that right now. It's not finished yet but a User Manual should look bad. :)
cbpowell 7y ago
It certainly looks quite beautiful, but sadly UI interactions -- resizing, clicking around, etc. -- seem to be fairly laggy at this point. Love the look-and-feel, but I think the interactive performance is frustrating at this point.
- francescmm 7y ago
  Hi! Thanks for the feedback! Which platform did you try it in? I'd love to have as much info as possible so I can fix it :)
  - cbpowell 7y ago
    This is on Windows 10 x64. I'm interested to try again when you have a new build.
the100rabh 7y ago
Love it, simple and straight forward. Took long enough to get a good looking git gui tool on linux.
prydt 7y ago
Great job on using QT!!
wooptoo 7y ago
There's also gitg which is fairly fast https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gitg https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gitg
pkamb 7y ago
Can this stage individual lines, and then display a view of only staged lines and no un-staged lines? AKA only the things you are about to commit. In SourceTree this is called "split view staging" and I find it indispensable. But SourceTree is so old as slow and unsupported that I'm desperately trying to find an alternative. Most of the existing GUI clients don't have this option.
- app4soft 7y ago
  > Can this stage individual lines, and then display a view of only staged lines and no un-staged lines? Try ask developer or submit feature request.[0] [0] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues
  - francescmm 7y ago
    It's something planned for the future :)
- jiehong 7y ago
  SublimeMerge[1] allows staging only chunks of files. [1]: https://www.sublimemerge.com/ https://www.sublimemerge.com/
  - emptysea 7y ago
    You can also select lines in the chunks of the file to stage individual lines. Not super discoverable but pretty useful.
- benoitg 7y ago
  I use gitg, precisely because it has this feature. https://github.com/GNOME/gitg https://github.com/GNOME/gitg
yatagarasu25 7y ago
It is awful how all git gui clients completely ignore git submodules

170 points by app4soft 7y ago

This looks cool. I'm curious if people use Git's tree view, in any form, as part of the regular workflow? If so, how? I have never found it useful, intuitive, or usually readable / parsable. Not the graph drawn on the command line, certainly not Github's tree view GUI of forked projects. I've also only ever worked on a project with one or two main trunk branches (master, and maybe dev), and feature branches, and very little merging between other arbitrary branches.

apocalyptic0n3 7y ago
I use it frequently. I work mostly solo but am often force to jump around quite a bit. So I use a variation of GitLab Flow[1] and often have dozens of active feature branches going on. It's useful seeing where a branch was created against develop so I can have some idea of what's been done on that branch since I last worked on the branch I just switched to, and what to expect when I merge or rebase. [1]: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/gitlab_flow.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/gitlab_flow.html
juped 7y ago
If you mean the history graph, try gitk (part of the git distribution, but you may need to install a separate git-x11 or similar package).
_ZeD_ 7y ago
Onestly, I always found all git interfaces (gui or text based) from just ugly and useless to totally counterintuitive. With one exception: the only good git ui that I tolerate for its clearance is the eclipse egit plugin https://www.eclipse.org/egit/ https://www.eclipse.org/egit/
gregmac 7y ago
At work, we use feature branching extensively, and there's often somewhere between 3 and 6 active feature branches at any time. The graph view is a good way to keep track of what's going on overall, if you're watching it regularly and branch parents are within a screen or two). Just earlier today I was working on testing a new feature that depended on 3 other independent fixes (basically, bugs found while I was building the feature). I did the fixes each as an independent branch, so I could get them in faster (before my new feature is done) plus to make the code review easier. The tree view is invaluable in testing my new feature to be sure I've merged the right fixes and am doing changes in the right branches. I also use it very occasionally to isolate if and/or why a particular fix got into a specific release branch (or not). I think there's probably better ways to do this (eg using bisect) but I do it so rarely I haven't bothered to learn.
Legogris 7y ago
I use it as part of my daily flow. One example: I work on a feature, which necessitates some refactoring, maybe upgrading a dependency, and oh, while I'm in the middle of it I notice some other, unrelated things, that need changing. In order to not have to break my flow and think too much about which changes are required for what, I just commit it all on the same local branch. This then gets broken up into different branches in individual PRs.
- stevebmark 7y ago
  I don't understand what this has to do with a visual view of branches and merges
  - Legogris 7y ago
    It certainly helps me when splitting, comparing and picking changes between branches. Also to keep track of how upstreams have changed compared to my working branch before doing rebases. Oh, and re Githubs fork view (which could be improved on the UI side), is helpful when seeing if anyone else has picked up the ball on unmaintained repos. If you don't find it useful, fine, I don't think we all need to grok each others personal workflows and motivate them to each other? Maybe you can compare it to a visual file manager that visualizes your directory structure as a tree; some people find it a necessity to get an overview of their file system, some don't.

ktpsns 7y ago

The tree looks nice. Similar to gitk, sourcetree or bitbucket. For whatever reason, github and gitlab cannot manage to get a similiar clean vertical git tree view.

speedgoose 7y ago

The link's layout is broken on mobile.

pjmlp 7y ago

Nice, good job, specially for going with Qt instead of Electron.

ericol 7y ago
EVen thought I understand the bashing Electron gets, it doesn't seem that Qt is the right choice right now. I tried to test the software: Needed Qt as there are no releases, but Qt is behind a paywall, and according to a previous post here in HN [1] it seems they resorted back to tactics they already reckoned (In 2015) were not good. I guess I'll just have to wait until the page has the releases ready. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821050
- jcelerier 7y ago
  > but Qt is behind a paywall, apt install qtbase5-dev / brew install qt / whatever works just fine here. if you are on windows and absolutely want the official releases : pip install aqtinstall python -m aqt install 5.14.2 windows desktop win64_msvc2017_64 -O c:/Qt/
  - ericol 7y ago
    Cheers. I'm on debian 10 and that didn't work, but I suspect it's something to do with my current installation that complains about a missing Qt4 software even after installing that (That I'll research when I have the time).
    - jcelerier 7y ago
      Likely. sudo docker run -it debian:10 apt update apt install qtbase5-dev build-essential g++-8 qt5-qmake qt5-default git git clone --recursive -j16 https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient mkdir build && cd build qmake ../GitQlient && make -j16 seems to produce a build without errors here
- app4soft 7y ago
  > I tried to test the software: Needed Qt as there are no releases This is not true! There are releases, and especially for Linux it already packaged as AppImage (portable package).[0] [0] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/releases https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/releases

W0lf 7y ago

Is anyone aware of a publicly available code base to look into when searching for high quality Qt-based (desktop) applications? Think chromium-quality software quality code base. I am looking for inspiring patterns and also things such as naming schemes as I regularly change my mind when it comes to developing Qt based applications with regard to: - naming things (e.g. should signals/slots be prefixed (sigFoo() -> onFooBared()) - how to deal with signal functions actually not implemented (clang-tidy warnings) - how to break up large main window classes in a reasonable manner and so on. Typically I immerse myself in one of the larger code bases I'm aware of (Android, Firefox, Chromium, Tensorflow, and some others) and regularly discover pretty useful patterns I can make use of. However, I was unlucky to find something for Qt based.

zwieback 7y ago
You could look at KDE, I don't know about the quality but it's a big enough public effort that it should be well reviewed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Projects
hoistbypetard 7y ago
The KDE applications would seem like a good place to start. https://kde.org/applications/office https://kde.org/applications/office
ynezz 7y ago
Qt itself, like for example https://github.com/qt/qttools https://github.com/qt/qttools?
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  Good suggestion. Code snippets showing the naming style they use: connect(contextShortcut, SIGNAL(activated()), this, SLOT(showContextDock())); connect(m_messageView->selectionModel(), SIGNAL(currentColumnChanged(QModelIndex,QModelIndex)), SLOT(updateLatestModel(QModelIndex))); Taken from https://github.com/qt/qttools/blob/7ec161d6f/src/linguist/linguist/mainwindow.cpp https://github.com/qt/qttools/blob/7ec161d6f/src/linguist/li...

lindgrenj6 7y ago

This looks amazing! Looks almost as slick as GitKraken, without requiring all of my RAM+1GB to run. Great work! I'll be recommending this to anyone who is looking for a git GUI client.

app4soft 7y ago
JFTR, Also take a look on Guitar[0] - another Qt-based Git GUI client. I actually use Guitar, but GitQlient is also installed on my PC. [0] https://github.com/soramimi/Guitar https://github.com/soramimi/Guitar
- potiuper 7y ago
  What does GitQlient do that Guitar, QGit, CodeReview, GitAhead, or git-cola do not?
  - francescmm 7y ago
    I can open multiple repositories at the same time in the same screen. I actually forked from QGit becuase I was missing a lot of functionality and inactivity in the UI. I couldn't find a way to do that in QGit and GitAhead at least. I didn't try the others.

chris-c-thomas 7y ago

How would I get this to run on MacOS?

ericol 7y ago
There are no releases for the software yet, so you need Qt in order to compile it. Check out the "Build" section on the page.
qaz_plm 7y ago
Should be able to download the .app release from here https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/index.md#appendix-a-releases https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/ind.... Looks to be build instructions as well in appendix b on the same page.
- mikewhy 7y ago
  Sadly, if you follow the link to the releases section, there is no release for macOS.
wheels 7y ago
You can install Qt with HomeBrew, and then building (I did it) is just: $ qmake && make Then you'll get a GitQlient.app.

red_admiral 7y ago

Tried this on win10: it seems to crash without an error message when I try and open a repository.

app4soft 7y ago
Please, report bugs to developer.[0] [0] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues
francescmm 7y ago
As @app4soft said, please open an issue and attach as many logs you can: https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues To be fair, in windows the performance is quite low due to Git Bash performance as well. I need to improve that :)

slezyr 7y ago

Looks really close to Sublime Merge[1], which is great. 1: https://www.sublimemerge.com/ https://www.sublimemerge.com/

kennydude 7y ago
After seeing quite a few new Git clients, Sublime Merge is still, imho, the easiest to use
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  i find magit even better, but of the non-emacs gits porcelains, smerge is way at the top of the heap.

jszymborski 7y ago

Kinda looks like GitAhead, but I'll be sure to give this one a shot. https://gitahead.github.io/gitahead.com/ https://gitahead.github.io/gitahead.com/

pachico 7y ago

This probably the less mobile friendly website I've seen in a while! I'll have to check it in my laptop later on.

jrochkind1 7y ago
I had trouble even on a laptop screen!
- app4soft 7y ago
  I don't know what you talking about, because I has no any issues on laptop.[0] BTW, Alternatively try read docs directly from repo on GitHub.[1] [0] https://i.imgur.com/9wGBlLJ.png https://i.imgur.com/9wGBlLJ.png [1] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/index.md https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/blob/master/docs/ind...
  - mikewhy 7y ago
    - text straight-up cuts off: https://imgur.com/uYCAxbk https://imgur.com/uYCAxbk - very weird layout: https://imgur.com/3uFfmSW https://imgur.com/3uFfmSW - mobile users may not even see content if they don't scroll left / right after scrolling down a bit: https://imgur.com/UQrKtcy https://imgur.com/UQrKtcy
- pekim 7y ago
  Unfortunately it's not quite as as good as it could be on a 1928x1080 desktop monitor either. I had to zoom to 170% to make it comfortable to read (my eyesight is not great, but not terrible either). And that introduced horizontal scrolling. So I had to drop back down to 150% zoom.
francescmm 7y ago
I'm going to check that right now. It's not finished yet but a User Manual should look bad. :)

cbpowell 7y ago

It certainly looks quite beautiful, but sadly UI interactions -- resizing, clicking around, etc. -- seem to be fairly laggy at this point. Love the look-and-feel, but I think the interactive performance is frustrating at this point.

francescmm 7y ago
Hi! Thanks for the feedback! Which platform did you try it in? I'd love to have as much info as possible so I can fix it :)
- cbpowell 7y ago
  This is on Windows 10 x64. I'm interested to try again when you have a new build.

the100rabh 7y ago

Love it, simple and straight forward. Took long enough to get a good looking git gui tool on linux.

prydt 7y ago

Great job on using QT!!

wooptoo 7y ago

There's also gitg which is fairly fast https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gitg https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gitg

pkamb 7y ago

Can this stage individual lines, and then display a view of only staged lines and no un-staged lines? AKA only the things you are about to commit. In SourceTree this is called "split view staging" and I find it indispensable. But SourceTree is so old as slow and unsupported that I'm desperately trying to find an alternative. Most of the existing GUI clients don't have this option.

app4soft 7y ago
> Can this stage individual lines, and then display a view of only staged lines and no un-staged lines? Try ask developer or submit feature request.[0] [0] https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues https://github.com/francescmm/GitQlient/issues
- francescmm 7y ago
  It's something planned for the future :)
jiehong 7y ago
SublimeMerge[1] allows staging only chunks of files. [1]: https://www.sublimemerge.com/ https://www.sublimemerge.com/
- emptysea 7y ago
  You can also select lines in the chunks of the file to stage individual lines. Not super discoverable but pretty useful.
benoitg 7y ago
I use gitg, precisely because it has this feature. https://github.com/GNOME/gitg https://github.com/GNOME/gitg

yatagarasu25 7y ago

It is awful how all git gui clients completely ignore git submodules