5 ms·

Can I like magit if I don’t like emacs?

mgr8 5y ago
you can try https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit, i think its quite similar. It is a TUI for git. It has made my git workflow very friction-less. Makes it very easy to cherry-pick commits, rebases, selecting chunks of files to add in atomic commits, and simplifies the resolutions of merge conflicts. It is also integrated into lunar vim if vim is more up your alley
sokoloff 5y ago
You can, but it will be worth it for you to spend a little effort to learn the basic buffer, window, and cursor management keystrokes. My 12 year old uses magit as a git interface and nothing else in emacs. That’s not a great testimonial as it was my direction to do that, but it seems to work just fine. The areas where magit earns outsized praise is not around a basic “pull, add and commit everything, push” workflow, but rather around being selective about crafting self-consistent but single-theme revisions. That will not be as fluid for someone with no fluency in emacs keyboard navigation, but I think I’d still find it easier than using the git command line to do it. (Hard for me to say with 30 years of emacs in the rear view.)
- jolmg 5y ago
  > but rather around being selective about crafting self-consistent but single-theme revisions Actually, I think git's got Magit beat on that. Magit might make it easier to stage specific lines, but git can stage specific parts of lines or even changes that are completely different than what's on the worktree, through the editing of diffs with `git add -p`'s `e` option.
  - dan-robertson 5y ago
    What percentage of git users do this compared to the percentage of magit users staging line-by-line or confidently amending/cherry-picking/interactive-rebasing?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    I'm somewhat convinced you can replicate that last feature (staging arbitrary / sub-line pieces of your changes) through ediff-staging (E s), but ediff is a complex tool in itself, and I don't know how to use it properly yet. (Ediff is a 2-way / 3-way interactive diffing interface, built into Emacs, with plenty of features for surgical diffing of files, buffers, directories and whatnot.)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - NateEag 5y ago
    Magit has great support for staging parts of lines - select the section you want to stage and press 's'.
    - amake 5y ago
      > Magit has great support for staging parts of lines This is news to me. > select the section you want to stage and press 's'. It stages line-wise for me. How do I get it to stage less than an entire line?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        The second line you quoted tells you how.
        gpderetta 5y ago
        When selecting only part of line, 's' will still stage the full line for me.
        jolmg 5y ago
        Indeed. cd $(mktemp -d) git init echo bar > file.txt git add file.txt git commit -m "init" echo foo_bar_baz > file.txt # select only "foo_" in magit-status and press "s" git diff --cached will show diff --git a/file.txt b/file.txt index 5716ca5..2fd000c 100644 --- a/file.txt +++ b/file.txt @@ -1 +1,2 @@ bar +foo_bar_baz rather than the desired diff --git a/file.txt b/file.txt index 5716ca5..2fd000c 100644 --- a/file.txt +++ b/file.txt @@ -1 +1,2 @@ -bar +foo_bar I can't really imagine this feature working that well with just selection. Editing of the diff seems required. I just updated magit, too. It seems to have been published 3 days ago.
        NateEag 5y ago
        ..huh. I just tested this in my Emacs instance and it works as you describe. I could swear I remember this working in the past, but I can find no hint of it in a few quick searches, so I'm likely mistaken. I'm sorry for the misinformation. Thanks for saying something.
b0afc375b5 5y ago
Absolutely. I can honestly say I learned Magit first (since it was directly applicable to my job) before I "properly" learned emacs.
stinos 5y ago
In my experience: yes but it I have the impression it'll remain a bit of a struggle unless you go all in and learn emacs as well. After hearing so much good of Magit in a previous thread here I thought 'ok why not?' and installed emacs and magit. That alone wasn't a walk in the park as I never used emacs before. Maybe I did something wrong but what I remember from it is mainly 'wtf x 10 and what kind of documentation is this'. After some hours I got the hang of it, and I see why it is liked, but still it didn't make me any faster with git because I already have everything needed for my main workflows (SublimeMerge + aliases). Also felt like to get any real value from it I'd need many extra hours on the learning curve and it wasn't clear to me whether the end result would actually be better than what I do now. So I skipped on it, but again: I fully understand that if you use emacs anyway it would be crazy not to use magit.
caskstrength 5y ago
Depends on what you mean by not liking emacs. If you prefer vim, then you can just install Evil to get similar-ish modal keyboard controls. If you are more of an IDE-person who likes controlling stuff with a mouse in VS or IntelliJ, then probably no.
agumonkey 5y ago
I believe magit underlying ideas are good no matter what software you use, it's not an emacs only principle. It's just keyboard oriented, text-light interaction design if you will. invoke versionning (key 1), see what's changed, pick the parts you like (few navigations keys and 2 keys to pick/unpick), invoke commit (key 4) write and accept (key 5) (amend is key 6 if you made a mistake) It's just fast, lean and tailored. Apparently people did it in vi too. I just wish it was the case in more places. Actually, whenever I write a vuejs thing, I try to embed keyboard as much as possible.
pbiggar 5y ago
There's a VSCode plugin based on magit. In my experience, it's basically identical (though occasionally a bit slow when there's lots of files). https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kahole.magit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kahole.m...
coyotespike 5y ago
I used my own emacs for several years, then switched to Spacemacs. It's far easier to learn and use for most people, and also works with Vim keybindings. I'd recommend giving it a try.
weaksauce 5y ago
if you like vim i'd suggest you install spacemacs and the git layer.

mgr8 5y ago

you can try https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit, i think its quite similar. It is a TUI for git. It has made my git workflow very friction-less. Makes it very easy to cherry-pick commits, rebases, selecting chunks of files to add in atomic commits, and simplifies the resolutions of merge conflicts. It is also integrated into lunar vim if vim is more up your alley

sokoloff 5y ago

You can, but it will be worth it for you to spend a little effort to learn the basic buffer, window, and cursor management keystrokes. My 12 year old uses magit as a git interface and nothing else in emacs. That’s not a great testimonial as it was my direction to do that, but it seems to work just fine. The areas where magit earns outsized praise is not around a basic “pull, add and commit everything, push” workflow, but rather around being selective about crafting self-consistent but single-theme revisions. That will not be as fluid for someone with no fluency in emacs keyboard navigation, but I think I’d still find it easier than using the git command line to do it. (Hard for me to say with 30 years of emacs in the rear view.)

jolmg 5y ago
> but rather around being selective about crafting self-consistent but single-theme revisions Actually, I think git's got Magit beat on that. Magit might make it easier to stage specific lines, but git can stage specific parts of lines or even changes that are completely different than what's on the worktree, through the editing of diffs with `git add -p`'s `e` option.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  What percentage of git users do this compared to the percentage of magit users staging line-by-line or confidently amending/cherry-picking/interactive-rebasing?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I'm somewhat convinced you can replicate that last feature (staging arbitrary / sub-line pieces of your changes) through ediff-staging (E s), but ediff is a complex tool in itself, and I don't know how to use it properly yet. (Ediff is a 2-way / 3-way interactive diffing interface, built into Emacs, with plenty of features for surgical diffing of files, buffers, directories and whatnot.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- NateEag 5y ago
  Magit has great support for staging parts of lines - select the section you want to stage and press 's'.
  - amake 5y ago
    > Magit has great support for staging parts of lines This is news to me. > select the section you want to stage and press 's'. It stages line-wise for me. How do I get it to stage less than an entire line?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      The second line you quoted tells you how.
      - gpderetta 5y ago
        When selecting only part of line, 's' will still stage the full line for me.
        jolmg 5y ago
        Indeed. cd $(mktemp -d) git init echo bar > file.txt git add file.txt git commit -m "init" echo foo_bar_baz > file.txt # select only "foo_" in magit-status and press "s" git diff --cached will show diff --git a/file.txt b/file.txt index 5716ca5..2fd000c 100644 --- a/file.txt +++ b/file.txt @@ -1 +1,2 @@ bar +foo_bar_baz rather than the desired diff --git a/file.txt b/file.txt index 5716ca5..2fd000c 100644 --- a/file.txt +++ b/file.txt @@ -1 +1,2 @@ -bar +foo_bar I can't really imagine this feature working that well with just selection. Editing of the diff seems required. I just updated magit, too. It seems to have been published 3 days ago.
        NateEag 5y ago
        ..huh. I just tested this in my Emacs instance and it works as you describe. I could swear I remember this working in the past, but I can find no hint of it in a few quick searches, so I'm likely mistaken. I'm sorry for the misinformation. Thanks for saying something.

b0afc375b5 5y ago

Absolutely. I can honestly say I learned Magit first (since it was directly applicable to my job) before I "properly" learned emacs.

stinos 5y ago

In my experience: yes but it I have the impression it'll remain a bit of a struggle unless you go all in and learn emacs as well. After hearing so much good of Magit in a previous thread here I thought 'ok why not?' and installed emacs and magit. That alone wasn't a walk in the park as I never used emacs before. Maybe I did something wrong but what I remember from it is mainly 'wtf x 10 and what kind of documentation is this'. After some hours I got the hang of it, and I see why it is liked, but still it didn't make me any faster with git because I already have everything needed for my main workflows (SublimeMerge + aliases). Also felt like to get any real value from it I'd need many extra hours on the learning curve and it wasn't clear to me whether the end result would actually be better than what I do now. So I skipped on it, but again: I fully understand that if you use emacs anyway it would be crazy not to use magit.

caskstrength 5y ago

Depends on what you mean by not liking emacs. If you prefer vim, then you can just install Evil to get similar-ish modal keyboard controls. If you are more of an IDE-person who likes controlling stuff with a mouse in VS or IntelliJ, then probably no.

agumonkey 5y ago

I believe magit underlying ideas are good no matter what software you use, it's not an emacs only principle. It's just keyboard oriented, text-light interaction design if you will. invoke versionning (key 1), see what's changed, pick the parts you like (few navigations keys and 2 keys to pick/unpick), invoke commit (key 4) write and accept (key 5) (amend is key 6 if you made a mistake) It's just fast, lean and tailored. Apparently people did it in vi too. I just wish it was the case in more places. Actually, whenever I write a vuejs thing, I try to embed keyboard as much as possible.

pbiggar 5y ago

There's a VSCode plugin based on magit. In my experience, it's basically identical (though occasionally a bit slow when there's lots of files). https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kahole.magit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kahole.m...

coyotespike 5y ago

I used my own emacs for several years, then switched to Spacemacs. It's far easier to learn and use for most people, and also works with Vim keybindings. I'd recommend giving it a try.

weaksauce 5y ago

if you like vim i'd suggest you install spacemacs and the git layer.