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Introducing SourceTree for Windows – a free desktop client for Git
- chbrosso 14y agoSounds like good news for making Git stuff easier on Windows platform. Git Extensions is pretty good, but can be intimidating for the unexperienced.
- mountaineer 14y agoAgreed, I have team members that are still struggling with Git after 6 months because of issues remembering the right command line and needing to jump back and forth between CLI and Git Extensions for various use cases. Having one interface will make their lives easier. I'm hopeful for a performance boost from ST before I recommend it though.
- j_s 14y agoIf you're willing to live slightly dangerously, you can help Plastic SCM test their [Windows-friendly] Git integration: http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2013/03/gitsync-is-out-native-windows-dvcs.html http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2013/03/gitsync-is-out-na...
- chbrosso 14y agoNote that it isn't a real Git client, but a communication layer between a PlasticSCM repo and a remote git repository.
- porker 14y agoBugger. Windows 7+. I've had Windows 7 sitting on the shelf since the day it launched, but haven't get got round to installing it...
- pja 14y ago7 the the first version of Windows that didn't bring me out in hives. Give it a whirl...you might be pleasantly surprised.
- dreen 14y agoIt really makes me wonder what is that they're using that doesn't work for older Windows...
- bitsoda 14y agoYou've been missing out on the best OS Microsoft has released IMO.
- darklajid 14y agoSo.. You're either running Vista (and I really doubt that, because the upgrade to 7 is more or less straight forward, you'd have done it a long time ago) or the long dead, end of life, unsupported, zombie OS called Windows XP. Which is fine. But shouldn't you _expect_ being left out by now? XP came out in 2001 (hazy memory, quoting Wikipedia). OS X (10.0, Cheetah) came out the same year. What's the minimum requirement for the Cocoa app? Well, a quick lookup says 10.6, which is from 2009. Which, incidently, is the same year Windows 7 came out. So Sourcetree needs an OS that is no more than 3.x years old.. Bugger?
- rz2k 14y agoTo be fair, SP3 was released in mid 2008, 7 wasn't released until late 2009, and XP had a greater usage share than 7 (and Vista combined) until early 2011. It is a sensible decision to only target Windows 7+, and the only reason to stick with XP would be specific compatibility with older programs, but it is a stretch to dismiss XP as a product that came out a decade ago when it still has an enormous market share.
- darklajid 14y agoI agree. And I still don't know if he runs XP at all, of course. But being turned off by the '3+ years old OS' requirement is .. just odd.
- porker 14y agoYes I do still run XP - I've kept running it for a few reasons: 1) I've spent months customising this install so it 'just works' for me 2) There's over 200 programs I'll have to find, download and install on Windows 7 (finding my license keys, old binaries etc if necessary) 3) I keep saying I'll replace this PC (from late 2006), so it's not worth reinstalling... :)
- heartbreak 14y agoGee, I hope your hard drive keeps spinning, or you'll have a mess on your hands. I think I take the opposite approach. I try to have the most easy-to-reproduce dev (and just general use) environment possible.
- acdha 14y agoYou have a year to upgrade before Microsoft pulls it completely off of life support: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx If you care about security, performance, usability or even basic things like display text quality, upgrade now.
- porker 14y agoNew computer coming this year - when I decide whether to stick with a Windows PC or switch to OSX... While I love software, you might have gathered I hate computer hardware and the setup of OS's :)
- winter_blue 14y agoIs there anything like this for Linux? And has anyone managed to get this up and running with Wine/PlayOnLinux?
- johncoltrane 14y agoSmartGitHG's name sucks hard but it's close to SourceTree feature-wise: http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/index.html http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/index.html
- kyrra 14y agoSmartGitHG is a nice alternative, but it does cost money ($79), while SourceTree is being given away for free (as a way to push BitBucket). I would love to see a Linux version of SourceTree, but it may be a while. As was pointed out by one of their employees before, they write each application as a native app for each OS to provide the best possible experience, so adding a new OS means adding a lot of work.
- DoubleMalt 14y agoWhile it is not the same of course, I love the Nautilus integration of RabbitVCS. Of course if you don't use a DE with nautilus ymmv.
- davvid 14y agogit-cola is quite full-featured on Linux (and OS X (and Windows)).
- thejosh 14y agoI recommend grabbing the latest git-cola rather than the one in your package manager if you use Ubuntu. The newest git-cola is so much more feature rich and cleaner in comparison. git-cola rocks!
- EugeneOZ 14y agoFree for beta, but what about prices in general?
- jstepka 14y agoSourceTree has been free since joining Atlassian. We'll continue to keep the product free as part of our Bitbucket platform to help developers adopt Git and Mercurial. Cheers, Justen -- Bitbucket & SourceTree product manager
- netcraft 14y agoI want to thank you for a great product and a perfect price point. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but any chance of open sourcing it in the future?
- jstepka 14y agoThanks for using SourceTree! We distribute source for JIRA, Stash, etc if you're a paying license holder for better plugin development. This is something we'll be sure to review if we add plugin support to SourceTree in the future.
- akavel 14y agoUhm, excuse me, but the license has a fragment with very strange wording and rather unclear meaning: "The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed as follows: (a) Installation and Use. Atlassian grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computer running a validly licensed copy of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed. 'Validly licensed' means the following: (i) For evaluation, using the software for up to 30 days free of charge, or (ii) After purchasing a single license, using the software on a single computer, OR using the software on multiple computers so long as it is the same person using it" Could you, or someone, please try to explain what's the intended meaning here, and maybe simplify the original text? Is this really referring to OS license?? Why? Sounds a bit so, but not fully, it is confusing. Please help, kind of fumble point for some people striving to be legal.
- 14y ago
- kayoone 14y agoI have been using TortoiseGit for years on Windows and thinks its pretty good, didnt really need more but ill give SourceTree a try as i like the OSX version of it.
- vyrotek 14y agoHave you tried GitExtensions? I originally tried TortoiseGit after having used TortoiseSVN for years but it never felt quite right. But, now I'm thinking of switching to SourceTree. :)
- Osiris 14y agoI prefer SourceTree because it's one window will all the operations rather than having to right-click on a folder or file to interact with it. If you keep it open you see an up-to-date representation of what files have been changed. In general, I just find the single-window-does-everything model better than the explorer extension model.
- twodayslate 14y agoI'm pretty new at git and only use github. Why should I use this over the official github client? The official app is pretty easy to use and makes sense to me.
- netcraft 14y agoI can't think of any reason why you couldn't use both. I haven't used this windows client yet, but on the mac it has quite a few features that really make it worth your while. I still commit and manage git from the command line mostly, but its worth the price of admission just for the graphs and diffs alone.
- mercurial 14y agoWhat do you get that gitk doesn't give you?
- aviraldg 14y agoThe official Github client is severely crippled and allows you to do little more than clone repos and make commits. This is a full-blown Git client.
- twodayslate 14y agoI guess I do use the app and the actual website. I don't know what I am missing.
- sthatipamala 14y agoGit does not equal Github. SourceTree allows you to use most of the features of Git (the program). The official Github client lets you use some of the features of Git (the program) but is mostly an interface for Github (the website). By their own admission, the Github client does away with the majority of Git features. If you want to find out what you're missing: http://git-scm.com/book http://git-scm.com/book
- arafalov 14y ago
- bitcartel 14y agoThe original SourceTree for Mac is a native Cocoa app. If this Windows version has been written in C# it could potentially be ported to Linux with Mono and GTK#/Qyoto. Perhaps the future is one single cross-platform app?
- far_far_away 14y agoI hope not. I like SourceTree the way it is (on OS X) and every cross platform UI toolkit I know produces apps that don't feel native. IMHO Bitbucket/Atlassian is doing it the right way: Native on the client side.
- bitcartel 14y agoCheck out Xamarin Studio. It's a full blown IDE and it's quite impressive in terms of native feel. Apparently written in C#, Mono and GTK#. http://xamarin.com/studio http://xamarin.com/studio
- drawkbox 14y agoThey have stayed pretty true to it, they bought it about a year ago and made it free. It used to be like Tower or Cornerstone where you had to buy it for $29 bucks or something. Have liked it since then and was a much better client than MacHg at the time for teams. Glad Windows is getting this, I use TortoiseHg and Git there currently but will probably switch.
- evanw 14y agoSourceTree for Windows appears to be written in C#, but their UI is built with WPF which I believe will be a limiting factor for cross-platform compatibility.
- heartbreak 14y agoThey would have to rewrite their UI, because Mono does not support WPF. In fact, they could be using a whole plethora of features not included in Mono. Mono is a wonderful project, and I've found it very useful, but the .Net -> Mono transition is still a huge time sink.
- pjmlp 14y agoGreat work! Nice to see companies investing into desktop applications.
- PallarelCoedr 14y agoAnd it's a WPF one too.
- ditoa 14y agoI don't really see that as a plus. Qt would have been my choice but oh well.
- pnathan 14y agoI have ST on my Mac. It's a pretty beefy machine - i7, 4gb of ram. And it runs like a lazy dog in a hot August day in North Carolina, i.e., very slowly. I really wish it'd be sped up and I sincerely hope that the Windows version is massively faster.
- Tomdarkness 14y agoI use ST frequently on OSX and can't say I've personally encountered any slowness. Are there any specific actions you find slow?
- pnathan 14y agoPretty much everything. Slow to load, slow to refresh, slow dialog boxes. Other stuff on my system is quite fast.
- terhechte 14y agoIt used to be rather slow for me, too. It got a lot faster with their 1.5 release, and (of course) ever since I did 'git gc' it also got a lot faster.
- sjstreeting 14y agoThe usual reason for slowness on OS X is one of the following: 1. Lack of HDD space (10%+ is benchmark to keep OS X's dynamic defrag happy) 2. Low memory - ST has to launch git & hg binaries and low memory affects those tasks especially 3. Running Mercurial on the App Store version on 10.8 - this is a little esoteric but it's down to Python precompilation and slight differences in versions. You can resolve that by using the system Mercurial instead of the embedded one for now.
- weslly 14y agoI have a mid 2010 mbp with 4gb of ram and it runs pretty fast.
- pnathan 14y ago
- elbelcho 14y agoI've been using the private beta for a few weeks now and it is a fantastic product. I've become a huge fan of BitBucket and SourceTree over the last month.
- mountaineer 14y agoI installed it a couple weeks ago, and I would not recommend this yet. I have appreciated the frequent and easy update process during the beta. But, wow, still a long ways to go performance-wise. In the working copy view, where I spend the most time in ST, most clicks take seconds to respond. I'm optimistic it improves, I've been a fan of the Mac version for a while.
- sjstreeting 14y agoPlease could you give us some details about your circumstances & repo at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN ? I test with quite a few repos and your performance experience with the Win beta is unusual - viewing files in the working copy should usually average well under a second. Do you have very large diffs for example? Info about the repo you are testing with would be very useful, especially if it's public. The Mac version of ST went through a lot of tuning over the years so we'll probably have a bunch to do on Windows too, your assistance would be welcome :) Steve Streeting, SourceTree dev @ Atlassian
- mountaineer 14y agoSure, I'll share my experience over there. The slowest part seems to be multiple file selects or working with multiple file selects (right click to add or remove from index) in the Working Copy changes and Staged Changes windows.
- rogerbinns 14y agoSome feedback for you since you probably wouldn't find out in other ways. I used the Mac version for a while comparing against the Github client. SourceTree then insists you register to continue use which isn't unreasonable. However registration wanted me to create an atlassian account of some sort that looked like a really crappy bug tracker (ie yet another username and yet another password on yet another site that I had no intention of using). So I gave up and kept using the Github client (and the command line mostly). I had expected registration to amount to a one off name and address kind of thing.
- 14y ago
- phormula 14y agoI prefer to use TortoiseGit. I dont know why ont would want to open a gui client, I prefer the commands integrated nicely into the shell
- mountaineer 14y agoCan you stage and commit hunks in TortoiseGit? I never knew of this wonderful feature of Git until using SourceTree. SourceTree opened up the power of Git for me, in particular the stage, and more control over commits.
- manojlds 14y agoTortoiseGit completely abstracts away the concept of index. Great for those moving from TortoiseSVN. Horrible for git users.
- tracker1 14y agoAs a TortoiseSVN user, I still think TortoiseGit is horrible period...
- GhotiFish 14y agoIs it open source? I notice the article mentions the word free 6 times(!!!!) while discussing this client. Which is a strong indicator that it is doing horrible things.
- erikvanzijst 14y agoFree as in beer.
- jobigoud 14y agoWe are using Git Extensions at work (http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/ http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/). What would be the interesting new features if we switched to SourceTree ?
- drawkbox 14y agoThe ability to connect up to Git and Mercurial repos. Very nice when working with bitbucket for private repos (git/mercurial) and github (git) for public from one app.
- swah 14y agoDoes it excel at anything, particularly? I still use a mix of command-line git and winmerge. (And I'm willing to try GUI tools, but Git has so many commands and options it becomes complex to know what you're doing in a GUI tool).
- meemo 14y agoI liked the previous icon set better. I don't see why there's a sudden aversion to color among developers. And why shapes have to be simplified.
- mrweasel 14y agoGit AND MERCURIAL client. There's not a single decent Mercurial client on Windows. EasyMercurial is better than nothing, but not by much. We a few .Net projects, (we mainly do Python), some of the projects we haven't even bothered moving from Subversion, because of the lack of good Windows Mercurial clients. Having SourceTree on both Mac and Windows is huge to us. EDIT: Just realized that they didn't include Mercurial support yet. Then I don't care at all.
- Surio 14y agoThank you for explaining this point. It made my mind too :)
- josephcooney 14y agoHave you tried the mercurial command line? I find it very easy to use, it has a low barrier to get entry, and works the same on all platforms.
- grandpoobah 14y agoTortoiseHg is an awesome Mercurial client, what are you talking about?
- X-Cubed 14y agoI can't speak for mrweasel, but in my experience, TortoiseHg struggles with performance on large repos, with basic operations (like refreshing the list of modified files in the Commit window) taking many seconds to complete. It consumes a lot of memory while idle (around 500MB on my machine), often becomes unresponsive or crashes, progress bars only represent the lowest level operations, not overall progress (eg: checking out a repo containing subrepos results in the bar going from start to finish several times), etc, etc. It's not terrible by any means, but I'm interested to see what other clients can bring to the party.
- dgesang 14y agoExcessive TortoiseHG user here. Many rather large repos with multiple branches, tags, forks, etc. All hg processes together take less than 130 MB RAM. I don't recall having any crash at all in the last few years, nor did it become unresponsive, not even on my old TP60 (2007).
- nayefc 14y agoThe command line is the best "client". I think.
- JVIDEL 14y agoNice, how about porting it to Linux? last time I tried to use a git gui there I wanted to read a visual basic book, then commit seppuku
- sandyarmstrong 14y agoWhat did you try? gitg was a pretty nice gitx clone when I used to work in desktop linux
- SigmundA 14y agoLooks good, except requires .Net 4.5 which we currently have an embargo on here for our dev machines since it replaces .Net 4.0 rather than side by side.
- heartbreak 14y agoOut of curiosity, what piece(s) of 4.5 have you found aren't backwards compatible with 4.0 anyway?
- topbanana 14y agoWe've experienced problems too. I really wish they'd just gone with a side by side release. Here's the full list of breaking changes http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh367887(v=vs.110).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh367887(v=vs.110).a...
- Glide 14y agoEh we hit a bug here with WCF discovery when we had the machines run 4.0 code and had 4.5 installed. I think the official fix has been out, but man did it cause some headaches.
- SigmundA 14y agoHeres the thread that tells all: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpf/thread/c05a8c02-de67-47a9-b4ed-fd8b622a7e4a http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpf/thread/c05...
- nahname 14y agoWhy not the command line? One look at that UI and I cannot fathom why it needs all those buttons. push, pull, checkout, add, commit. I can go days just using those five commands.
- andypants 14y agoIt has some useful features that I find easier to use in a gui than using command line. For example, being able to see a summary of diffs of all staged and unstaged files, and being able to select particular lines of the diffs and stage/unstage/undo them. Or being able to see commits and diffs from other peoples' branches before I pull them. Honestly, a gui is pretty useful for git, especially when you're doing operations that you want to apply to many specific files in different folders. > push, pull, checkout, add, commit. I can go days just using those five commands. You're missing out on a few git features then. I agree some of the buttons are useless, like adding or removing files. The main window has a list of staged and unstaged files and I just drag and drop files between the two window panes. I've never had to use those buttons before.
- nahname 14y ago>You're missing out on a few git features then. Including diff, which I forgot, what else do you use everyday?
- robin_reala 14y agoMerge, fetch, rebase, and blame are all daily commands for me.
- andypants 14y agolog, branch, merge, mv, rm, status, fetch, reset Some more that aren't used everyday, but certainly quite often
- nahname 14y agoOh, can't believe I forgot to include status.
- BuddhaSource 14y agoThank you, thank you & thank you! There is nothing better than this for code review & git management for team. I love this on Mac but had to compromise on Windows! Looking forward for ubuntu too someday :). Great job guys!
- knkella 14y agoFinally something that developers using Windows want. Command-line is good, but when it comes to Windows I think people expect to have some GUI in place for all tools. Great work!