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I disagree. First of all, a well-designed Git GUI (examples below) exposes the git's underlying data model to you; in contrast, the CLI obscures it until somet

I disagree. First of all, a well-designed Git GUI (examples below) exposes the git's underlying data model to you; in contrast, the CLI obscures it until something breaks and you're forced into it without context. Git operates on a graph and there is simply no way around it. The more you're exposed to the graph, the better you can mentally model it and ask it to do the right things. While there are many half-baked Electron-based UIs that only unnecessarily complicates things, there are good ones too: On Windows (and Linux thru Mono), I use GitExtensions. The visualizations are sane and discover-friendly. It will tell you what to expect. When I work on C++ projects, the one built into CLion (JetBrains family; as mentioned by a sibling comment) is very good on its own. What impresses me the most is that has good visual support of a patch-oriented workflow. You can work with multiple "changelists" offline, shuffle individual changes around, seamlessly convert between changelists and patch files, and (most importantly) still work nice with the vanilla git model as the "actual history". It also works transparently with conceptually monorepo projects that have multiple physical repos, allowing you to do simultaneous commits. I feel VSCode, GitHub client, Kraken, and several other Electron-based stuff, are too focused on the "polish" than substance, or are too opinionated to be used across repos I don't own.

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cerved 5y ago
The CLI doesn't obscure as much as presupposes that you understand internal workings of git. All GUIs are not created equal. The JetBRains GUIs are pretty good. Others try and impose git "their way" and just invite creating a mess.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
So back when I was learning git, I was very shy about using any GUI because I was afraid that it would make learning how git works that much harder. I think that I somehow felt that the CLI was more fundamental, in some way. But I think you are right, and I was wrong. A better interface that puts the graph front and center would have led me to learn it so much faster, especially when it also exposes the command line equivalents, as magit does (or so I've heard).
faizshah 5y ago
Yep I love the git GUI in Jetbrains IDEs, especially the change lists and shelf based workflow. I also like using the IDE’s diff to quickly use parts of an old shelved patch or when I’m working through a book I can diff my project with the answer repo to quickly see and work through the differences. But my favorite feature is Local History which has saved me from many overzealous git disasters: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/local-history.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/local-history.html Basically the IDE has its own revision history of your project’s files that it stores and you can recover your files from it. So when you accidentally revert instead of undo or use —-hard when you didn’t really mean to, Local History comes and saves the day.

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cerved 5y ago

The CLI doesn't obscure as much as presupposes that you understand internal workings of git. All GUIs are not created equal. The JetBRains GUIs are pretty good. Others try and impose git "their way" and just invite creating a mess.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

So back when I was learning git, I was very shy about using any GUI because I was afraid that it would make learning how git works that much harder. I think that I somehow felt that the CLI was more fundamental, in some way. But I think you are right, and I was wrong. A better interface that puts the graph front and center would have led me to learn it so much faster, especially when it also exposes the command line equivalents, as magit does (or so I've heard).

faizshah 5y ago

Yep I love the git GUI in Jetbrains IDEs, especially the change lists and shelf based workflow. I also like using the IDE’s diff to quickly use parts of an old shelved patch or when I’m working through a book I can diff my project with the answer repo to quickly see and work through the differences. But my favorite feature is Local History which has saved me from many overzealous git disasters: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/local-history.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/local-history.html Basically the IDE has its own revision history of your project’s files that it stores and you can recover your files from it. So when you accidentally revert instead of undo or use —-hard when you didn’t really mean to, Local History comes and saves the day.