5 ms·

Not a single person I’ve met using git in the last decade has thrived using a UI for it.

animal_spirits 5y ago
I've said this in other threads but I'll proselytize here as well. I really started to grok git after using the lazygit terminal UI. I think it's really handy to see what the current "state" of git is in and how to browse it easily. Would continue to recommend. https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit
oblio 5y ago
That's a failing of Git. TortoiseSVN brought source control to millions of people. A good tool should be fully embeddable in a UI, 15 years after its launch.
- approxim8ion 5y ago
  We still use tortoiseSVN at work. It's crude but shockingly simple to use. Moving to git would be a significant expense just to train people not to break things and to get them used to CLI.
  - somethingor 5y ago
    TortoiseGit exists too and is fantastic IMO: https://tortoisegit.org/ https://tortoisegit.org/
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Indeed, it makes using git so much less painfull. There are days where I daydream of Clearcase when dealing with git.
      - atulatul 5y ago
        Early in my career- when I got evil twin error- I was conditioned not to daydream of clearcase ever. :)
        pjmlp 5y ago
        On the positive side, messing up the view configurations doesn't wipe our files.
    - approxim8ion 5y ago
      Wish they put some screenshots on their site, but I'm glad it does if it does to git what it does to SVN!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- OJFord 5y ago
  Or a success of git? No good GUI exists because they realise they'd just be recreating things that exist, but with a GUI frame? If you wrote git 2.whatever from scratch would you structure rhe commands a bit differently? Yeah, sure, probably; but I always think these threads are way overblown. The common stuff that you use frequently.. well you use it frequently, so either you remember it as a result or you use the alias feature so that you can. For the less common stuff.. if you have to look it up in the excellent documentation, is that a failing?
  - oblio 5y ago
    > if you have to look it up in the excellent documentation, is that a failing Yes, if we ever want version control to become mainstream. Version control is a very practical, day to day concept. It's just almost unusable for regular folks. And regular folks for sure won't use CLIs (unless you point a gun to their heads).
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Version control is mainstream; git isn't, and isn't trying to be? Git is version control for plaintext files, (yes yes I know LFS exists) primarily software, and used by people who like using CLIs and have all kinds of other CLI tools for it to interface with. Who's trying to make 'regular folks' use git, with or without a gun?
      - dividedbyzero 5y ago
        > Who's trying to make 'regular folks' use git, with or without a gun? I would have loved to have that option quite a few times. Lots of projects that involve software, but also get contributions from non-developers, or need almost no user-facing config, but not exactly zero. If git wasn't so hostile, quite a few tiny config web UIs I've built over the years could have been SublimeText or the like and a very userfriendly git client. It's kind of frustrating to have a repository with a directory full of .sql files, a CI pipeline that versions and verifies those and deploys the updated app, but the domain expert who is perfectly capable of writing the SQL still needs me to put the file in the right place and commit+push it, because they (understandably) just won't use git on Windows.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Not a single person I’ve met using git in the last decade has thrived using a UI for it. I do most of my git through one or another UI (right now, mainly the integrated functionality in VSCode, a gitflow workflow extension for VSCode, and repository history graph extension for VSCode that supports doing operations against branches/tags/commits from the graph.) I feel loke I’m thriving that way. Its not a substitute for knowing git, though, and I think that people who lean on a UI as a substitute for knowing what is going on underneath rather than as a convenience layer are not likely to thrive.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lanstin 5y ago
magit (for emacs) is quite good. But I still only use it for browsing around mostly, or single-file commits. For serious work, I start with git status, and then git diff all the changes, and then group them and then commit then in groups, then pull --rebase then push HEAD:good_branch_name (by the time I've done all the above, I have a better chance at a good name than I do for the first commit). Then over to PR land, where we have "ff if possible and delete source branch."

I've said this in other threads but I'll proselytize here as well. I really started to grok git after using the lazygit terminal UI. I think it's really handy to see what the current "state" of git is in and how to browse it easily. Would continue to recommend. https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit

oblio 5y ago

That's a failing of Git. TortoiseSVN brought source control to millions of people. A good tool should be fully embeddable in a UI, 15 years after its launch.

approxim8ion 5y ago
We still use tortoiseSVN at work. It's crude but shockingly simple to use. Moving to git would be a significant expense just to train people not to break things and to get them used to CLI.
- somethingor 5y ago
  TortoiseGit exists too and is fantastic IMO: https://tortoisegit.org/ https://tortoisegit.org/
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Indeed, it makes using git so much less painfull. There are days where I daydream of Clearcase when dealing with git.
    - atulatul 5y ago
      Early in my career- when I got evil twin error- I was conditioned not to daydream of clearcase ever. :)
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        On the positive side, messing up the view configurations doesn't wipe our files.
  - approxim8ion 5y ago
    Wish they put some screenshots on their site, but I'm glad it does if it does to git what it does to SVN!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
OJFord 5y ago
Or a success of git? No good GUI exists because they realise they'd just be recreating things that exist, but with a GUI frame? If you wrote git 2.whatever from scratch would you structure rhe commands a bit differently? Yeah, sure, probably; but I always think these threads are way overblown. The common stuff that you use frequently.. well you use it frequently, so either you remember it as a result or you use the alias feature so that you can. For the less common stuff.. if you have to look it up in the excellent documentation, is that a failing?
- oblio 5y ago
  > if you have to look it up in the excellent documentation, is that a failing Yes, if we ever want version control to become mainstream. Version control is a very practical, day to day concept. It's just almost unusable for regular folks. And regular folks for sure won't use CLIs (unless you point a gun to their heads).
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Version control is mainstream; git isn't, and isn't trying to be? Git is version control for plaintext files, (yes yes I know LFS exists) primarily software, and used by people who like using CLIs and have all kinds of other CLI tools for it to interface with. Who's trying to make 'regular folks' use git, with or without a gun?
    - dividedbyzero 5y ago
      > Who's trying to make 'regular folks' use git, with or without a gun? I would have loved to have that option quite a few times. Lots of projects that involve software, but also get contributions from non-developers, or need almost no user-facing config, but not exactly zero. If git wasn't so hostile, quite a few tiny config web UIs I've built over the years could have been SublimeText or the like and a very userfriendly git client. It's kind of frustrating to have a repository with a directory full of .sql files, a CI pipeline that versions and verifies those and deploys the updated app, but the domain expert who is perfectly capable of writing the SQL still needs me to put the file in the right place and commit+push it, because they (understandably) just won't use git on Windows.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Not a single person I’ve met using git in the last decade has thrived using a UI for it. I do most of my git through one or another UI (right now, mainly the integrated functionality in VSCode, a gitflow workflow extension for VSCode, and repository history graph extension for VSCode that supports doing operations against branches/tags/commits from the graph.) I feel loke I’m thriving that way. Its not a substitute for knowing git, though, and I think that people who lean on a UI as a substitute for knowing what is going on underneath rather than as a convenience layer are not likely to thrive.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lanstin 5y ago

magit (for emacs) is quite good. But I still only use it for browsing around mostly, or single-file commits. For serious work, I start with git status, and then git diff all the changes, and then group them and then commit then in groups, then pull --rebase then push HEAD:good_branch_name (by the time I've done all the above, I have a better chance at a good name than I do for the first commit). Then over to PR land, where we have "ff if possible and delete source branch."