15 ms·

GitUp makes Git painless

267 points by mirceasoaica 11y ago

the_ancient 11y ago
>>Requires Mac OS X 10.8 or later Apparently it is not the interface I have been missing... Having a Git tool not available for Linux is blasphemy
- camillomiller 11y ago
  Yeah how dare they develop a nice and useful tool, right?
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    …and not release under a free/open license for GNU/Linux. Yeah, right. That stinks. No joke. Proprietary software for proprietary OS's ought to not exist.
    - wsc981 11y ago
      I hope you're joking or being sarcastic.
      - riscy 11y ago
        I hope he's not.
        res0nat0r 11y ago
        What is wrong for charging money for a product you spend time developing that people want to buy because it provides them value?
        amelius 11y ago
        Nothing. And don't worry. If this turns out to be successful, the OSS community will copy this idea in no time.
        euyyn 11y ago
        Sure, using their own time, not his.
        djur 11y ago
        There's nothing wrong with charging money for a product. You can charge money for a product without it being proprietary software.
        res0nat0r 11y ago
        There also is nothing wrong with proprietary software. Don't run it, or purchase it if you have some moral disagreement with it, but many people don't and are perfectly happy to pay money for it.
        djur 11y ago
        There are a lot of people who believe there is something wrong with proprietary software. You don't have to agree with the FSF or their goals, but it does everyone a disservice to conflate the argument for software freedom with an argument against proprietary software. The FSF considers commercial use and distribution of software to be an important part of software freedom and does not consider licenses that forbid it to be free. And if you think it is unethical to sell proprietary software and refuse to use it oneself, it is also perfectly reasonable to advocate that others follow the same course. A value position that one doesn't believe others should follow isn't a value, it's just a preference.
        quadrangle 11y ago
        There's absolutely things wrong with proprietary software. It leaves software users in the position of having technology that they cannot control freely. See, e.g. the arguments from GM and John Deere that you do not have permission to modify your own car or tractor. Or countless other examples. And basically zero of the people who pay for proprietary software are saying "I'm so glad this is proprietary". They pay because the package of what they get in utility is worthwhile and outweighs any concern about the proprietary nature of the software.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - quadrangle 11y ago
        Is "no joke" inadequate to tell you that I'm not joking?
    - _ak 11y ago
      2015, the year of the GNU/Linux desktop! For real now!
      - ossreality 11y ago
        I'd like to meet these people that make this comment sarcastically, because I'm willing to bet they haven't even fucking seen desktop linux for a few years.
  - the_ancient 11y ago
    Apparently you and everyone else in this thread do not know the History of git git is a tool developed specifically for Linux Kernel Development, GIT would not exist with out linux.. Linus Torvalds created git for linux..... So releasing any tool for git that does not support linux, IMO is betraying the history and foundation of git.
    - camillomiller 11y ago
      You see, I think this is exactly the kind of entitled attitude that pushes away people from Linux. People don't give a damn about the intricacies and history of their tools, they care about getting a good work done in the less stressful way.
- zamalek 11y ago
  Yeah, I simply don't understand this recent tendency to launch on Mac first. Out of the big 3 (Linux, Windows, Mac), Mac is by far the worst platform to launch on because you have to buy hardware. Please can we stop it now. Just launch on Linux - everyone can access Linux no matter whether they are PC or Mac.
  - ptomato 11y ago
    If you're planning to be a partially commercial product (which this appears to be) the reason to launch on Mac first is that Mac users buy software.
  - CJefferson 11y ago
    Releasing closed-source software on Linux is a pain, unlike Mac where you can assume most people will be running one of 3 recent Mac OS X releases (or even 2)
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    ? The market share of people actually running a platform probably matters more than the number of people theoretically capable of installing a platform.
  - jakobegger 11y ago
    The Mac is a phenomenal platform to launch right now if you make software targeted at developers. There's huge growth in mobile development, and many mobile developers work on OS X. Not just iOS developers, I'm seeing lots of Android devlopers working on Macs too recently. And if you make a new tool, you should go where the young (in the sense of experience, not age) developers are. Experienced developers already have their workflows all set up and don't try new tools as often. Even if its inconvenient for those who don't have a Mac, from a business point of view, targeting the Mac is absolutely sensible.
    - hatsix 11y ago
      Having just (involuntarily) switched to a Mac at work, I can also attest to the fact that Mac users tend towards impulse buying software... The fact that I have to buy software to get proper window management and a good window switcher makes me furious. App-only switching makes no sense to me. I just want to pull up the last window I was looking at, I don't want to have to think about whether it was in the current app group or not. Also, not allowing that to be customized makes no sense. The OS has all of the info needed, and the market for 3rd party apps shows there is a desire... but I guess I'm just 'holding it wrong'. Most people in the office have spent $100 on software that just customizes the OS, not even considering the other dev tools that they purchase. As much as I detest OS X, IF I were releasing desktop software for-pay, I would focus on OS X ($ per user) and Windows (kids & college students).
- edgarvaldes 11y ago
  It would have been so easy to just add "The Git interface you've been missing on Mac OS"
- vvanders 11y ago
  +1 If you're going to extend an open source tool at least make it cross platform.
- niuzeta 11y ago
  > Having a Git tool not available for Linux is blasphemy I still weep for Sourcetree support for linux... ;(
  - drbawb 11y ago
    I stopped using Sourcetree a while ago, and I can't say I particularly miss it. It's slow, RAM hungry, and their "recent" updates have made the tool unusable in my opinion. If I pick a range of commits in the log: I can no longer get ST to show me a tree of files which changed between those commits. To add insult to injury: the list of diffs often only shows changes to one file, regardless of how many files are actually changed between those two commits. These days I just use the command line and w/ Splice[0] I've got a nice diff/mergetool right in my editor. [0]: http://sjl.bitbucket.org/splice.vim/ http://sjl.bitbucket.org/splice.vim/
- _kst_ 11y ago
  Yes, it would be nice if the web page mentioned that it's only for Mac OS X other than in the fine print at the bottom of the page.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  IntelliJ IDEA (after a while getting font rendering working properly) has an amazing set of VCS functionality and works quite nicely on Linux (have used on Gentoo and Arch). Of course it's ostensibly aimed at JVM languages, but has good support for PHP/JS/Python/Ruby/etc. There's also an upcoming C/C++ toolchain for it (the CLion experimental builds will eventually be a plugin for IDEA too). Most of the great VCS features are available in the non-commerical open-source branch too: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community </fanboy>
  - the8472 11y ago
    Similarly Eclipse's EGit is pretty nice too, although, being based on JGit and not the reference git implementations it has a few features here and there that aren't supported. But the on-disk format is compatible so you can always apply the commandline tools if needed.
    - k_bx 11y ago
      Emacs's magit is really amazing. Integration with Emacs, great shortcuts, 100% keyboard-friendly (of course), and many more stuff I only now discover.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  Presumably, you're saying the same thing to the people behind GitHub?
- craigching 11y ago
  If you use emacs, checkout magit. I can't live without it now.
v-yadli 11y ago
No commit logs in the graph? I would prefer a list view instead...
- swisspol 11y ago
  Try Cmd-D to see a list of ancestor commits with summary, date & author while in the Map view.
  - v-yadli 11y ago
    I don't have a Mac at hand and the best effort I can do is to finish the 90 seconds. I would suggest an attempt to include more info in the stock view... Even the metro map have station names. :-) People do not recognize commits with just graphical patterns(especially when the patterns are just pulled in from remote).
dan00 11y ago
I don't know if it's such a good idea to start by showing how easy changing commit messages is or even have this option that easily available, because after all you're changing the history and the beginner might not be aware what this really means, and beginners seem to be the target audience for this tool.
- graffitici 11y ago
  I agree. If you've already pushed to other repos with the old commit message, this can cause issues. The only time I actually change the commit message is when I'm sure that nobody else has seen it. I'm not even sure what happens when you change the local commit message, and push it again. Does it just get updated in the remote repo?
  - swisspol 11y ago
    You get the usual Git error "unable to fast-forward" which means in plain English that what's on the remote repo doesn't match what you have locally anymore, so you can't push, unless you force. In such cases, GitUp just prompts you if you want to force push. If you decide to force push, then your updated commit message is on the remote repo as well. This is completely safe if this is your private repo, or you are pushing to a private branch. In any other situation e.g. a shared repo with a team or a public repo on GitHub, you should pretty much never force-push as this will mess up other people clones (as there are now 2 histories of the repo in a way).
    - loumf 11y ago
      Which makes it really weird that your video shows you doing this to master, a branch very likely to be shared.
      - graffitici 11y ago
        I agree. Instead of promoting this as something very simple to do with GitUp, we should stop people from having people the urge to change commit messages. Plus, as even programming data structures are increasingly immutable, I don't see why I would go change the commit message from a week ago.
davexunit 11y ago
Hmm that's not Magit... OSX only and proprietary: no thanks.
- Grue3 11y ago
  Was about to post the same thing. Magit made me so much better at using Git, it's ridiculous.
  - davexunit 11y ago
    Hands-down the best Git interface, and entirely keyboard driven. It has improved my workflow more than any other tool besides Emacs itself.
quadrangle 11y ago
Git is a registered trademark, I don't see notice of permission… maybe they didn't ask and might not have it?
- nkohari 11y ago
  IANAL, but they almost certainly don't need permission. Typically you just need a message that says X is a registered trademark of Y. GitUp is unaffiliated with Y. Also, it's entertaining to me that in one comment you say that closed-source proprietary software is bad, and in another comment you're concerned about whether they follow trademark law. I understand that it's not a direct comparison and open source software is still subject to IP law; it's just that the juxtaposition of your comments is a bit silly.
  - dikaiosune 11y ago
    IP law is pretty important to open-source keeping rights to names too, and git is open source (GPL v2 IIRC). Don't see the contradiction, as parts of IP law are needed to make sure contributions remain open.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    Talking about "IP" law as one thing is useless. There's certainly no real-world validity to the idea that ideas are property, but even if we accept the legal concept of it… Copyright is a restriction that mostly censors the sharing and building of ideas freely. It should be abolished. But it's currently used to deal with plagiarism and to support copyleft licenses. We should have stronger legal protects for attribution, against false endorsement claims, and support technology freedom with mandates for source release for published works and prohibition of DRM. Patents are just bullshit. We should abolish patent law and just have better social systems for grants and funding for research (although it might already be true that almost all useful patentable inventions are built on socially-funded research already). Trademark is a consumer protection. It is absolutely essential. It protects people in the market to know that they are dealing with the same legitimate entity when they see the trademark in use. There are cases of abuse or of it being overly strong, but trademark is totally important and basically positive.
Raphmedia 11y ago
Sounds very nice. I'm using SourceTree and it slows down my entire system because I have up to 50 active repo I use which are updated often. Even when I turn off automatic fetch.
kainsavage 11y ago
That moment when your tool gets posted to Hacker News and the video on your homepage is muted and cannot be unmuted.
- swisspol 11y ago
  It actually doesn't have a soundtrack at all :) Mostly because I didn't have time for one and also because I wanted not to require people to listen to some speech to understand how GitUp works (which you can't always do at work anyway).
dcre 11y ago
Does this mean they're using libgit2, or what? > Because it bypasses the Git binary tool and interacts directly with the repo database, GitUp is vastly more reliable than other Git clients and often faster than the command line.
- swisspol 11y ago
  GitUp uses a subset of libgit2 for the core low-level functions (credited in the About panel and I've been contributing to it for some time). Then on top of it is an extensive toolkit I built in a few months for repo manipulation and rendering.
  - dcre 11y ago
    Thanks!
kazinator 11y ago
Dialog box? Why not drag and drop? Just drag this branch into the branch, to indicate what shape of graph you want, and it merges to make it that way. How about an interface where you can pick commits from a graph, and drag them into a free space, where they exist as labeled points. Then, draw line segments among hem and connect them to a graph. Then, the software cherry picks these commits according to what you've drawn and creates that branch. The need for a merge could be indicated as a red blinking light on a node. (And the not yet cherry-picked segments are grayed out.) From there you click on it, get a list of conflicted paths, and engage in resolution UI. The blinking indicator goes away, and the cherry pick continues.
- swisspol 11y ago
  GitUp Map is mostly keyboard driven at this time for speed, but post 1.0 the idea is to add support for more mouse based UI indeed.
paozac 11y ago
The tree visualization is nice, but if you'd rather use a (Mac only) GPL tool then Gitx-dev, a fork of Gitx, is still pretty good (http://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ http://rowanj.github.io/gitx/).
eric_h 11y ago
> IMPORTANT: During Pre-Release, signing-up for a GitUp account allows you to enable advanced features (like rewriting commits), participate in the GitUp forums, access the "Continuous" build channel, and most importantly, show your support for the app and future developments! Why do I need a GitUp account to enable rewriting commits? Furthermore it looks like these prerelease builds expire. I'm guessing the released software will be neither free nor open source.
- swisspol 11y ago
  Anything can happen (I have a number of projects that are open-source, some other close-source), but the idea so far is to have a free app with an in-app purchase to unlock the advanced/pro feature. I might make open-source some of the "Git toolkit" I built for this app, but it's too early to say. The reason for expiring builds is that 1) it's pre-release, 2) it's a software intended for professional engineers and 3) the app is rapidly evolving, so I don't want to have people using old versions which may have bugs fixed since then: http://forums.gitup.co/t/gitup-release-notes/16 http://forums.gitup.co/t/gitup-release-notes/16.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    What made you decide where the line is for "advanced" features? It seems like doing any sort of actual work is considered advanced. There isn't a feature I can think of that would make me consider paying for development tools, so I'll never be buying your software, so feel free to tailor your response (if any) with that in mind.
    - swisspol 11y ago
      Fair question. It's not decided yet. The easiest code-wise was to put the Map editing features in that bucket, so that's what I did for now. Everything else (browsing, committing, stashes, repo config, undo / redo, cloning...) is free and no registration needed.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    You don't need to make an application closed source to have in app purchases. Look at mobaxterm [http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/license.html http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/license.html] It is licensed under GPL version 3. It has a free version and a professional version which cost $69 per user. This does not break the GPL. You may already know this but it seems like a lot of developers think open source mean Free as in cost. [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html] This is also the reason why I don't like the term Free Software since people usually think it is speaking about the cost.
zyxley 11y ago
This had my attention right up until the "account needed for some features" thing.
- Animats 11y ago
  Right. "Some features require creating a free account." Then you wonder what it's doing. "Sharing" your Git credentials with some cloud service? After SourceForge turned evil, we have to be very suspicious of anyone trying to cash in on open source development.
jv22222 11y ago
The general verbiage, tone and saying things like "It will change your life as a developer" makes me not really want to look into it. Show, don't tell, that's my advice. Anyway, the main point is you are making an effort to build something that can solve problems and you are putting it out there, so well done on that front.
- swisspol 11y ago
  "Show, don't tell": that's what the short movie (which is only a screencap, not a marketing promo), and animated GIFs are for :)
  - jv22222 11y ago
    Right. So... SHOW and don't tell ;) -- ie Axe/change the heckle raising verbiage. Edit: If you make something great you don't need to brag, it's just great, and people will get that. Edit 2: Think of it like this. You're creating a conversion funnel. People are landing on your page. If 50% of them instantly leave due to the bragging then the conversion funnel is not very optimized. You want as many people as possible to get into your funnel and few as possible to leave on any one step.
    - stcredzero 11y ago
      If you make something great you don't need to brag, it's just great, and people will get that. If the "brag" is factually correct and doesn't spin or otherwise misrepresent, what's the problem? Some people might be repelled by "brags." Others might be repelled by being overly concerned with someone else's style.
      - jv22222 11y ago
        - "This will change your life as a developer" - "The Git interface you've been missing all your life has finally arrived." How can those possibly be factually correct brags? Edit: Looking in to swisspol's real world profile... I must admit he's achieved so much that he probably does have the right to brag, so this may all be a moot point anyway ;)
brobdingnagian 11y ago
I like the name GitUp for two reasons. First, it has the meaning "get up," and second, if you say "GitUp" out loud, people would reasonably hear "GitHub," then you'd have to launch into an explanation of the differences between the two.
- wojciechpolak 11y ago
  There is already a git-up (which I really recommend btw): https://github.com/aanand/git-up https://github.com/aanand/git-up (Ruby) and https://github.com/msiemens/PyGitUp https://github.com/msiemens/PyGitUp (Python) So why not do a quick research and choose a completely different name for it?
pdmy 11y ago
Title is misleading. Should be makes Git painless for those who don't want to learn a new tool (yeah even developers). I have been using Git cmd line and its easy to use and would not have it any other way.
zatkin 11y ago
>http://gitup.co/images/speed.png http://gitup.co/images/speed.png I hope no-one here ever has to deal with a tree like this.
- swisspol 11y ago
  That's the Git repo itself :)
  - zatkin 11y ago
    Seesh, you weren't kidding either, check this out: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network "Couldn't load network graph. Too many forks to display."
- scotthew1 11y ago
  i'd expect any significant project to have a tree _at least_ that complex. here's a small sample of my company's tree with several team repos merging into a master repo. this tool really loses its usefulness quickly for repos this complex.. http://i.imgur.com/xl2a1ac.png http://i.imgur.com/xl2a1ac.png
  - zatkin 11y ago
    Are you on the art industry?
gre 11y ago
When trying to fetch, I get: "Unsupported url protocol."
- swisspol 11y ago
  HTTP/HTTPS, Git and SSH are supported. What's your remote URL? It'd be very helpful if you could take a minute to post a topic at http://forums.gitup.co http://forums.gitup.co so I can have a look. Thanks!
  - gre 11y ago
    It was a syntax error in my ``.git/config``. Here you go: http://forums.gitup.co/t/improved-error-message-idea-if-a-fetch-fails-show-which-remote-is-breaking-things/136 http://forums.gitup.co/t/improved-error-message-idea-if-a-fe...
aagha 11y ago
Awesome. Now 13% of people that would like to use it can [0]. Cool idea. Just wish it wasn't tied to Mac. 0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015 http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015 If StackOverflow surveys are any indication, more like 21.5%. I completely agree that I wish it wasn't tied to Mac (Linux please and thank you), but the proportion of developers is higher on OS X than in the consumer market. I have no data to support this, but I suspect that many of those devs on Mac are also front-end, which (again, no data) makes me think that they might care a lot more about a nice GUI tool than devs on other OSes.
  - Alupis 11y ago
    It's interesting to note that according to the same data points, Linux Desktop usage for developers is just about on par with OSX usage (20.5%).
  - LocalPCGuy 11y ago
    Also interesting to note that > 50% of all developers use Windows. So much for the other comments saying devs only use Macs.
- lectrick 11y ago
  The "creator class", i.e. many devs, and probably most open-source devs, are on an OS X laptop these days.
tomc1985 11y ago
There's already an addon for git that makes git very painless: git up https://github.com/aanand/git-up https://github.com/aanand/git-up Pick another name!
okal 11y ago
I realize this is a pretty broad question, but what is it about Git that people find painful? Could be Stockholm Syndrome on my part, but I have a pretty hard time understanding why someone can't spend a week getting up to speed with a tool they intend to use for years to come.
- tluyben2 11y ago
  Yeah, I was coming here to post that Git is already painless. It's a tool you are intimately using if you're doing anything other than Hello World projects with your team; it doesn't seem too much to ask to actually learn how it works. And once you know it's painless. Edit: I was thinking about it a bit more and it's actually one of the least painful tools I have ever used on a computer...
  - euyyn 11y ago
    I don't think I'm in the minority of those that know how Git works and still find it one of the most painful tools out there. The interface should be designed with UX in mind, and Git's CLI wasn't.
    - tluyben2 11y ago
      I guess we worked with different tools... But what UX are you referring to when you talk about the git cli? What is painful about it (answering the parents' question I guess)?
  - lostsock 11y ago
    I really love how your edit is the exact opposite you original statement. Good on you for coming back and adding your further thoughts to the discussion.
- rbosinger 11y ago
  I still like a GUI from time to time. I use SourceTree. I can use GIT on the command-line and I'm a competent developer but I like to be able to click files and see the changes and just drag them into a commit. It may not be the fastest way, or the most advanced but it works for me.
bcg1 11y ago
Proprietary development tools are a trap. And this software is just a proprietary wrapper around a real community product. Doesn't matter if you rewrote the library for interacting with the database... standing on the shoulders of giants. Are we really at the point where "professional engineers" need to buy a GUI as a substitute for a fast, extensible, cross-platform command line tool that is so easy to use that even I could figure it out?
- FooBarWidget 11y ago
  So you say, but if that's what everyone thought then GPL would have won instead of MIT. In every thread, the amount of "GPL is viral" people far outnumber the GPL defenders. It's clear that most people prefer to be able to build proprietary tools on top of open source ones.
  - bcg1 11y ago
    So you say, but popularity "in every thread" (whatever that means) is a silly metric. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "then GPL would have won instead of MIT". Its not a war, even if some trendy corporate wannabe hacker tries to convince you that it is so that you give him the fruits of your labor for nothing. And if it was a war... show me the MIT licensed toolchain, the MIT licensed OS, etc. I'm not hating on permissively licensed free software at all, I appreciate those who write it and give it to the world... but I'm going to call you out if you try to sow the seeds of division among hackers.
kolev 11y ago
I love it! How can I pay for it? You should've kickstarted this!
- swisspol 11y ago
  You can't yet, but thanks! :)
dcre 11y ago
I'm a SourceTree user on Mac. Just tried GitUp out for an hour. Here are the problems I have with SourceTree: * Slow as hell * No/bad keyboard shorts, and setting up custom ones is annoying and buggy * Uses tons of memory — it eventually gets up to 1 GB after running for a day or two, and my repos are not very big. My thoughts on GitUp: * Crazy fast (almost disarmingly so – I think it needs more visual confirmation when things happen) * Excellent commit/staging view. Reminds me of GitExtensions, a nice Git GUI for Windows * I love the focus on keyboard shortcuts. They work really well in the commit view * Map view is truly awful. I get that it's a work in progress, but I have no idea what its organizing principle is. Too much pointless whitespace. It radically overprivileges old branches and commits. I don't see a way to focus on what I did most recently. * The list of commits (Cmd+D) in the map view is useless
- kohanz 11y ago
  > Here are the problems I have with SourceTree: > * Slow as hell Good to know I'm not the only one with this issue.
  - joshschreuder 11y ago
    There have been serious issues with performance in the 1.6 releases (including Windows). There are a few Git specific things if you're running Git < v2 that you can try: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4485059/git-bash-is-extremely-slow-in-windows-7-x64/24045966#24045966 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4485059/git-bash-is-extr... And in Sourcetree, set options under Options -> Diff, set Size Limit (Text) to 128KB and Size Limit (Binary) to 1024KB.
- swisspol 11y ago
  Thanks for trying GitUp and for the feedback! > The list of commits (Cmd+D) in the map view is useless Could you provide feedback on http://forums.gitup.co http://forums.gitup.co about what you are specifically trying to do or what your workflow is?
  - dcre 11y ago
cheald 11y ago
It's kind of amusing to me how the pendulum has swung, and we're now producing OS X-only developer software. But then, I'm an oddball who works on Windows as my shell with the real work happening on a headless Linux box via SSH and Samba for 99% of my development.
- alexchamberlain 11y ago
  +1 I was going to make a rather sarcastic comment that this is for "professional engineers", but is OS X only. Ubuntu on a VirtualBox on Windows for me.
  - hatsix 11y ago
    How do you resolve 'executable' files in your VM? I've not been able to run node apps because executables end up getting stored in /node_modules/, but if that is on a windows share, no executable flag is stored. Resolving the FS differences has always been the biggest pain for me using windows as the core OS.
    - dikaiosune 11y ago
      I for one do all sharing of files between guest and host using Dropbox and git. I've found that shared volumes have many problems like the one you cite, and treating them like two separate machines is usually the easiest way for me. If I had two physical machines with the same configuration as my guest/host, I would use network-based sync, so that's what I do on my Windows host (gaming pc at home, laptop that needs to be work friendly) with my Arch guest VM.
    - tokenizerrr 11y ago
      Just put a samba server on the virtual machine.
      - cheald 11y ago
        This would be my vote, too. Let the VM be the self-contained dev environment, with your desktop just being a thin client to get to it.
chjohasbrouck 11y ago
There's something really satisfying about seeing a visual representation of my git repositories, but my overall impression is that I'm not going to get any productivity gains here. If you know what you're doing, CLI is just faster. I understand that it's aimed at more novice developers, but I think for those developers it's even more important to use the command line. Developers that get into the habit of using unnecessary graphical UIs always seem worse off because of it.
- cgs1019 11y ago
  It's not as snazzy as in the article but this alias in my .gitconfig is an integral part of my git workflow: gr = !git \ --no-pager \ log -n 16 --graph --date-order --date=short --branches \ --pretty=\ '%C(yellow bold)%h%Creset\ %Creset %C(blue bold)%d%Creset\ %C(white bold blink)%s' The 'gr' is short for 'graph'. You can tweak the -n to show more history. I actually have several of these, 'gr', 'grr', 'grrr', etc. to show more and more history.
  - pimlottc 11y ago
    I think your alias might have gotten cut off; the last color tag is never reset. Also, I don't understand, why disable the pager and limit the number of entries?
- swisspol 11y ago
  > If you know what you're doing, CLI is just faster. This is quite true with other Git GUIs since they pretty much wrap the Git CLI and add a bunch of dialogs and whatnot, but GitUp was designed especially to avoid that. I'm a big user of the CLI myself, so the last thing I wanted was to build a Git client with a slower interaction model :) Between the keyboard shortcuts and the fact it deals directly with the repo database, GitUp is actually faster than the CLI in a number of cases. Experienced Git users do notice it on Twitter and on the GitUp forums. One example from my workflow: just rebasing my work branch is instantaneous in GitUp while the Git CLT takes a couple seconds (the UX being as fast in both cases to perform the operation, so a net gain for sure). YMMV of course and you can totally use GitUp for some operations and Git CLI for some others.
neil_s 11y ago
I needed something like this when I was starting out, and still occasionally do. Obviously once you've had a few dozen commits you get a hang of things, but initially, the visualisation can help a lot. For my co-founder who's just getting started with software engineering practices like version control, I recommended she use ungit (https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit)
mgold 11y ago
It saves snapshots of you git history. So we have version control... for our version control? Slick.
hwstar 11y ago
Just couldn't resist... I've fallen and I can't GitUp
ExpiredLink 11y ago
SVN makes version control painless.
tb303 11y ago
Git makes git painless
erikb 11y ago
Huge disadvantage that it's only for OSX. I don't know but I think the most people who can't already handle git should be on Windows, right? Or on the web. That's an attempt to be the best tool ever for people who don't know git yet and it's not aiming at them. That's really a pity, because I hope it would succeed.
copsarebastards 11y ago
To be honest, git is already relatively painless. What problems does this solve?
barbs 11y ago
Looks interesting. I think speed is absolutely important when it comes to version-control interfaces. It was one of the main reasons Linus created it in the first place (as opposed to SVN), and I'd argue it's important to maintain flow. My current git interface is "tig", a curses-based command-line client, which I enjoy for its speed and simplicity. Gitup looks appealing for similar reasons.
masnick 11y ago
This looks great. BTW I don't get all the negativity in the comments about Mac-only tools. A huge number of developers use Macs specifically for well-designed third party software with *nix goodness. I wish other platforms had the same quality of third party software, but they just don't. This is mostly because it is much more difficult to make money selling software for other platforms, for whatever reason. In any case, I don't see the justification for ragging on someone for developing for (1) the platform they choose to use themselves and (2) the only platform where indie devs can make any money.
karmakaze 11y ago
I've tried to use GitX and SourceTree in my workflow and always end up going back to gitk. There's always some information, view or action I can do in gitk that I can't make the others do. I find git from the command line to be the most painless. Everything else is always the third thing after gitk and command-line. Seeing multiple stashes used to be a great extra feature, then I just stopped using stashes.
Sbn 11y ago
Windows + Linux is still ~80% of the developer share according to Stackoverflow surveys, so this might not be the best direction to spend effort
- dallanlee 11y ago
  That may be true, however OS X users actually spend money on apps.
shroukkhan 11y ago
only thing i can think is why is this not a webapp usable with any git server..like github?someone should get to it !!
dallanlee 11y ago
I think your choice, swisspol, to use the 'free-with-in-app-purchase' model is the right one. You're selling to OS X users, who are willing to actually spend money on apps and software, and it allows us to use an app and then decide if we want to buy it. All that really needs to be said is, "GitUp is free with lots of capability to get things done. But to speed up your workflow even more and use all of its features, it offers an in-app purchase to upgrade." Plus, we as OS X users are used to noticing that little 'in-app purchases' note on apps and don't think it's a "slap in the face". I just hope that it will be available on the Mac App Store. I trust apps most that are sold on the App Store and I always look there first. I tie my card to my iTunes account or even have gift card money ready to make a purchase. Also, I can see when it was updated, what others say about it in reviews and share it quickly and easily. Just my thoughts, @swisspol
hobarrera 11y ago
`man git` make git painless. And it works on almost any platform. I've also got to say I dislike how this makes history rewriting so simple, advertises it so much, but shows no warning as to the complications this can bring (anybody else using this repo will suffer greatly on the next pull!). Of course, that's explains in the man page.
lectrick 11y ago
The entire philosophy of this goes against Git. Editing history (including comments) without a new commit is basically a revert to mutable history, which means shared git history suddenly becomes a problem.

267 points by mirceasoaica 11y ago

>>Requires Mac OS X 10.8 or later Apparently it is not the interface I have been missing... Having a Git tool not available for Linux is blasphemy

camillomiller 11y ago
Yeah how dare they develop a nice and useful tool, right?
- quadrangle 11y ago
  …and not release under a free/open license for GNU/Linux. Yeah, right. That stinks. No joke. Proprietary software for proprietary OS's ought to not exist.
  - wsc981 11y ago
    I hope you're joking or being sarcastic.
    - riscy 11y ago
      I hope he's not.
      - res0nat0r 11y ago
        What is wrong for charging money for a product you spend time developing that people want to buy because it provides them value?
        amelius 11y ago
        Nothing. And don't worry. If this turns out to be successful, the OSS community will copy this idea in no time.
        euyyn 11y ago
        Sure, using their own time, not his.
        djur 11y ago
        There's nothing wrong with charging money for a product. You can charge money for a product without it being proprietary software.
        res0nat0r 11y ago
        There also is nothing wrong with proprietary software. Don't run it, or purchase it if you have some moral disagreement with it, but many people don't and are perfectly happy to pay money for it.
        djur 11y ago
        There are a lot of people who believe there is something wrong with proprietary software. You don't have to agree with the FSF or their goals, but it does everyone a disservice to conflate the argument for software freedom with an argument against proprietary software. The FSF considers commercial use and distribution of software to be an important part of software freedom and does not consider licenses that forbid it to be free. And if you think it is unethical to sell proprietary software and refuse to use it oneself, it is also perfectly reasonable to advocate that others follow the same course. A value position that one doesn't believe others should follow isn't a value, it's just a preference.
        quadrangle 11y ago
        There's absolutely things wrong with proprietary software. It leaves software users in the position of having technology that they cannot control freely. See, e.g. the arguments from GM and John Deere that you do not have permission to modify your own car or tractor. Or countless other examples. And basically zero of the people who pay for proprietary software are saying "I'm so glad this is proprietary". They pay because the package of what they get in utility is worthwhile and outweighs any concern about the proprietary nature of the software.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      Is "no joke" inadequate to tell you that I'm not joking?
  - _ak 11y ago
    2015, the year of the GNU/Linux desktop! For real now!
    - ossreality 11y ago
      I'd like to meet these people that make this comment sarcastically, because I'm willing to bet they haven't even fucking seen desktop linux for a few years.
- the_ancient 11y ago
  Apparently you and everyone else in this thread do not know the History of git git is a tool developed specifically for Linux Kernel Development, GIT would not exist with out linux.. Linus Torvalds created git for linux..... So releasing any tool for git that does not support linux, IMO is betraying the history and foundation of git.
  - camillomiller 11y ago
    You see, I think this is exactly the kind of entitled attitude that pushes away people from Linux. People don't give a damn about the intricacies and history of their tools, they care about getting a good work done in the less stressful way.
zamalek 11y ago
Yeah, I simply don't understand this recent tendency to launch on Mac first. Out of the big 3 (Linux, Windows, Mac), Mac is by far the worst platform to launch on because you have to buy hardware. Please can we stop it now. Just launch on Linux - everyone can access Linux no matter whether they are PC or Mac.
- ptomato 11y ago
  If you're planning to be a partially commercial product (which this appears to be) the reason to launch on Mac first is that Mac users buy software.
- CJefferson 11y ago
  Releasing closed-source software on Linux is a pain, unlike Mac where you can assume most people will be running one of 3 recent Mac OS X releases (or even 2)
- tedunangst 11y ago
  ? The market share of people actually running a platform probably matters more than the number of people theoretically capable of installing a platform.
- jakobegger 11y ago
  The Mac is a phenomenal platform to launch right now if you make software targeted at developers. There's huge growth in mobile development, and many mobile developers work on OS X. Not just iOS developers, I'm seeing lots of Android devlopers working on Macs too recently. And if you make a new tool, you should go where the young (in the sense of experience, not age) developers are. Experienced developers already have their workflows all set up and don't try new tools as often. Even if its inconvenient for those who don't have a Mac, from a business point of view, targeting the Mac is absolutely sensible.
  - hatsix 11y ago
    Having just (involuntarily) switched to a Mac at work, I can also attest to the fact that Mac users tend towards impulse buying software... The fact that I have to buy software to get proper window management and a good window switcher makes me furious. App-only switching makes no sense to me. I just want to pull up the last window I was looking at, I don't want to have to think about whether it was in the current app group or not. Also, not allowing that to be customized makes no sense. The OS has all of the info needed, and the market for 3rd party apps shows there is a desire... but I guess I'm just 'holding it wrong'. Most people in the office have spent $100 on software that just customizes the OS, not even considering the other dev tools that they purchase. As much as I detest OS X, IF I were releasing desktop software for-pay, I would focus on OS X ($ per user) and Windows (kids & college students).
edgarvaldes 11y ago
It would have been so easy to just add "The Git interface you've been missing on Mac OS"
vvanders 11y ago
+1 If you're going to extend an open source tool at least make it cross platform.
niuzeta 11y ago
> Having a Git tool not available for Linux is blasphemy I still weep for Sourcetree support for linux... ;(
- drbawb 11y ago
  I stopped using Sourcetree a while ago, and I can't say I particularly miss it. It's slow, RAM hungry, and their "recent" updates have made the tool unusable in my opinion. If I pick a range of commits in the log: I can no longer get ST to show me a tree of files which changed between those commits. To add insult to injury: the list of diffs often only shows changes to one file, regardless of how many files are actually changed between those two commits. These days I just use the command line and w/ Splice[0] I've got a nice diff/mergetool right in my editor. [0]: http://sjl.bitbucket.org/splice.vim/ http://sjl.bitbucket.org/splice.vim/
_kst_ 11y ago
Yes, it would be nice if the web page mentioned that it's only for Mac OS X other than in the fine print at the bottom of the page.
dikaiosune 11y ago
IntelliJ IDEA (after a while getting font rendering working properly) has an amazing set of VCS functionality and works quite nicely on Linux (have used on Gentoo and Arch). Of course it's ostensibly aimed at JVM languages, but has good support for PHP/JS/Python/Ruby/etc. There's also an upcoming C/C++ toolchain for it (the CLion experimental builds will eventually be a plugin for IDEA too). Most of the great VCS features are available in the non-commerical open-source branch too: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community </fanboy>
- the8472 11y ago
  Similarly Eclipse's EGit is pretty nice too, although, being based on JGit and not the reference git implementations it has a few features here and there that aren't supported. But the on-disk format is compatible so you can always apply the commandline tools if needed.
  - k_bx 11y ago
    Emacs's magit is really amazing. Integration with Emacs, great shortcuts, 100% keyboard-friendly (of course), and many more stuff I only now discover.
oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
Presumably, you're saying the same thing to the people behind GitHub?
craigching 11y ago
If you use emacs, checkout magit. I can't live without it now.

v-yadli 11y ago

No commit logs in the graph? I would prefer a list view instead...

swisspol 11y ago
Try Cmd-D to see a list of ancestor commits with summary, date & author while in the Map view.
- v-yadli 11y ago
  I don't have a Mac at hand and the best effort I can do is to finish the 90 seconds. I would suggest an attempt to include more info in the stock view... Even the metro map have station names. :-) People do not recognize commits with just graphical patterns(especially when the patterns are just pulled in from remote).

dan00 11y ago

I don't know if it's such a good idea to start by showing how easy changing commit messages is or even have this option that easily available, because after all you're changing the history and the beginner might not be aware what this really means, and beginners seem to be the target audience for this tool.

graffitici 11y ago
I agree. If you've already pushed to other repos with the old commit message, this can cause issues. The only time I actually change the commit message is when I'm sure that nobody else has seen it. I'm not even sure what happens when you change the local commit message, and push it again. Does it just get updated in the remote repo?
- swisspol 11y ago
  You get the usual Git error "unable to fast-forward" which means in plain English that what's on the remote repo doesn't match what you have locally anymore, so you can't push, unless you force. In such cases, GitUp just prompts you if you want to force push. If you decide to force push, then your updated commit message is on the remote repo as well. This is completely safe if this is your private repo, or you are pushing to a private branch. In any other situation e.g. a shared repo with a team or a public repo on GitHub, you should pretty much never force-push as this will mess up other people clones (as there are now 2 histories of the repo in a way).
  - loumf 11y ago
    Which makes it really weird that your video shows you doing this to master, a branch very likely to be shared.
    - graffitici 11y ago
      I agree. Instead of promoting this as something very simple to do with GitUp, we should stop people from having people the urge to change commit messages. Plus, as even programming data structures are increasingly immutable, I don't see why I would go change the commit message from a week ago.

davexunit 11y ago

Hmm that's not Magit... OSX only and proprietary: no thanks.

Grue3 11y ago
Was about to post the same thing. Magit made me so much better at using Git, it's ridiculous.
- davexunit 11y ago
  Hands-down the best Git interface, and entirely keyboard driven. It has improved my workflow more than any other tool besides Emacs itself.

quadrangle 11y ago

Git is a registered trademark, I don't see notice of permission… maybe they didn't ask and might not have it?

nkohari 11y ago
IANAL, but they almost certainly don't need permission. Typically you just need a message that says X is a registered trademark of Y. GitUp is unaffiliated with Y. Also, it's entertaining to me that in one comment you say that closed-source proprietary software is bad, and in another comment you're concerned about whether they follow trademark law. I understand that it's not a direct comparison and open source software is still subject to IP law; it's just that the juxtaposition of your comments is a bit silly.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  IP law is pretty important to open-source keeping rights to names too, and git is open source (GPL v2 IIRC). Don't see the contradiction, as parts of IP law are needed to make sure contributions remain open.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Talking about "IP" law as one thing is useless. There's certainly no real-world validity to the idea that ideas are property, but even if we accept the legal concept of it… Copyright is a restriction that mostly censors the sharing and building of ideas freely. It should be abolished. But it's currently used to deal with plagiarism and to support copyleft licenses. We should have stronger legal protects for attribution, against false endorsement claims, and support technology freedom with mandates for source release for published works and prohibition of DRM. Patents are just bullshit. We should abolish patent law and just have better social systems for grants and funding for research (although it might already be true that almost all useful patentable inventions are built on socially-funded research already). Trademark is a consumer protection. It is absolutely essential. It protects people in the market to know that they are dealing with the same legitimate entity when they see the trademark in use. There are cases of abuse or of it being overly strong, but trademark is totally important and basically positive.

Raphmedia 11y ago

Sounds very nice. I'm using SourceTree and it slows down my entire system because I have up to 50 active repo I use which are updated often. Even when I turn off automatic fetch.

kainsavage 11y ago

That moment when your tool gets posted to Hacker News and the video on your homepage is muted and cannot be unmuted.

swisspol 11y ago
It actually doesn't have a soundtrack at all :) Mostly because I didn't have time for one and also because I wanted not to require people to listen to some speech to understand how GitUp works (which you can't always do at work anyway).

dcre 11y ago

Does this mean they're using libgit2, or what? > Because it bypasses the Git binary tool and interacts directly with the repo database, GitUp is vastly more reliable than other Git clients and often faster than the command line.

swisspol 11y ago
GitUp uses a subset of libgit2 for the core low-level functions (credited in the About panel and I've been contributing to it for some time). Then on top of it is an extensive toolkit I built in a few months for repo manipulation and rendering.
- dcre 11y ago
  Thanks!

kazinator 11y ago

Dialog box? Why not drag and drop? Just drag this branch into the branch, to indicate what shape of graph you want, and it merges to make it that way. How about an interface where you can pick commits from a graph, and drag them into a free space, where they exist as labeled points. Then, draw line segments among hem and connect them to a graph. Then, the software cherry picks these commits according to what you've drawn and creates that branch. The need for a merge could be indicated as a red blinking light on a node. (And the not yet cherry-picked segments are grayed out.) From there you click on it, get a list of conflicted paths, and engage in resolution UI. The blinking indicator goes away, and the cherry pick continues.

swisspol 11y ago
GitUp Map is mostly keyboard driven at this time for speed, but post 1.0 the idea is to add support for more mouse based UI indeed.

paozac 11y ago

The tree visualization is nice, but if you'd rather use a (Mac only) GPL tool then Gitx-dev, a fork of Gitx, is still pretty good (http://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ http://rowanj.github.io/gitx/).

eric_h 11y ago

> IMPORTANT: During Pre-Release, signing-up for a GitUp account allows you to enable advanced features (like rewriting commits), participate in the GitUp forums, access the "Continuous" build channel, and most importantly, show your support for the app and future developments! Why do I need a GitUp account to enable rewriting commits? Furthermore it looks like these prerelease builds expire. I'm guessing the released software will be neither free nor open source.

swisspol 11y ago
Anything can happen (I have a number of projects that are open-source, some other close-source), but the idea so far is to have a free app with an in-app purchase to unlock the advanced/pro feature. I might make open-source some of the "Git toolkit" I built for this app, but it's too early to say. The reason for expiring builds is that 1) it's pre-release, 2) it's a software intended for professional engineers and 3) the app is rapidly evolving, so I don't want to have people using old versions which may have bugs fixed since then: http://forums.gitup.co/t/gitup-release-notes/16 http://forums.gitup.co/t/gitup-release-notes/16.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  What made you decide where the line is for "advanced" features? It seems like doing any sort of actual work is considered advanced. There isn't a feature I can think of that would make me consider paying for development tools, so I'll never be buying your software, so feel free to tailor your response (if any) with that in mind.
  - swisspol 11y ago
    Fair question. It's not decided yet. The easiest code-wise was to put the Map editing features in that bucket, so that's what I did for now. Everything else (browsing, committing, stashes, repo config, undo / redo, cloning...) is free and no registration needed.
- baldfat 11y ago
  You don't need to make an application closed source to have in app purchases. Look at mobaxterm [http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/license.html http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/license.html] It is licensed under GPL version 3. It has a free version and a professional version which cost $69 per user. This does not break the GPL. You may already know this but it seems like a lot of developers think open source mean Free as in cost. [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html] This is also the reason why I don't like the term Free Software since people usually think it is speaking about the cost.

zyxley 11y ago

This had my attention right up until the "account needed for some features" thing.

Animats 11y ago
Right. "Some features require creating a free account." Then you wonder what it's doing. "Sharing" your Git credentials with some cloud service? After SourceForge turned evil, we have to be very suspicious of anyone trying to cash in on open source development.

jv22222 11y ago

The general verbiage, tone and saying things like "It will change your life as a developer" makes me not really want to look into it. Show, don't tell, that's my advice. Anyway, the main point is you are making an effort to build something that can solve problems and you are putting it out there, so well done on that front.

swisspol 11y ago
"Show, don't tell": that's what the short movie (which is only a screencap, not a marketing promo), and animated GIFs are for :)
- jv22222 11y ago
  Right. So... SHOW and don't tell ;) -- ie Axe/change the heckle raising verbiage. Edit: If you make something great you don't need to brag, it's just great, and people will get that. Edit 2: Think of it like this. You're creating a conversion funnel. People are landing on your page. If 50% of them instantly leave due to the bragging then the conversion funnel is not very optimized. You want as many people as possible to get into your funnel and few as possible to leave on any one step.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    If you make something great you don't need to brag, it's just great, and people will get that. If the "brag" is factually correct and doesn't spin or otherwise misrepresent, what's the problem? Some people might be repelled by "brags." Others might be repelled by being overly concerned with someone else's style.
    - jv22222 11y ago
      - "This will change your life as a developer" - "The Git interface you've been missing all your life has finally arrived." How can those possibly be factually correct brags? Edit: Looking in to swisspol's real world profile... I must admit he's achieved so much that he probably does have the right to brag, so this may all be a moot point anyway ;)

brobdingnagian 11y ago

I like the name GitUp for two reasons. First, it has the meaning "get up," and second, if you say "GitUp" out loud, people would reasonably hear "GitHub," then you'd have to launch into an explanation of the differences between the two.

wojciechpolak 11y ago
There is already a git-up (which I really recommend btw): https://github.com/aanand/git-up https://github.com/aanand/git-up (Ruby) and https://github.com/msiemens/PyGitUp https://github.com/msiemens/PyGitUp (Python) So why not do a quick research and choose a completely different name for it?

pdmy 11y ago

Title is misleading. Should be makes Git painless for those who don't want to learn a new tool (yeah even developers). I have been using Git cmd line and its easy to use and would not have it any other way.

zatkin 11y ago

>http://gitup.co/images/speed.png http://gitup.co/images/speed.png I hope no-one here ever has to deal with a tree like this.

swisspol 11y ago
That's the Git repo itself :)
- zatkin 11y ago
  Seesh, you weren't kidding either, check this out: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network "Couldn't load network graph. Too many forks to display."
scotthew1 11y ago
i'd expect any significant project to have a tree _at least_ that complex. here's a small sample of my company's tree with several team repos merging into a master repo. this tool really loses its usefulness quickly for repos this complex.. http://i.imgur.com/xl2a1ac.png http://i.imgur.com/xl2a1ac.png
- zatkin 11y ago
  Are you on the art industry?

gre 11y ago

When trying to fetch, I get: "Unsupported url protocol."

swisspol 11y ago
HTTP/HTTPS, Git and SSH are supported. What's your remote URL? It'd be very helpful if you could take a minute to post a topic at http://forums.gitup.co http://forums.gitup.co so I can have a look. Thanks!
- gre 11y ago
  It was a syntax error in my ``.git/config``. Here you go: http://forums.gitup.co/t/improved-error-message-idea-if-a-fetch-fails-show-which-remote-is-breaking-things/136 http://forums.gitup.co/t/improved-error-message-idea-if-a-fe...

aagha 11y ago

Awesome. Now 13% of people that would like to use it can [0]. Cool idea. Just wish it wasn't tied to Mac. 0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

dikaiosune 11y ago
http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015 http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015 If StackOverflow surveys are any indication, more like 21.5%. I completely agree that I wish it wasn't tied to Mac (Linux please and thank you), but the proportion of developers is higher on OS X than in the consumer market. I have no data to support this, but I suspect that many of those devs on Mac are also front-end, which (again, no data) makes me think that they might care a lot more about a nice GUI tool than devs on other OSes.
- Alupis 11y ago
  It's interesting to note that according to the same data points, Linux Desktop usage for developers is just about on par with OSX usage (20.5%).
- LocalPCGuy 11y ago
  Also interesting to note that > 50% of all developers use Windows. So much for the other comments saying devs only use Macs.
lectrick 11y ago
The "creator class", i.e. many devs, and probably most open-source devs, are on an OS X laptop these days.

tomc1985 11y ago

There's already an addon for git that makes git very painless: git up https://github.com/aanand/git-up https://github.com/aanand/git-up Pick another name!

okal 11y ago

I realize this is a pretty broad question, but what is it about Git that people find painful? Could be Stockholm Syndrome on my part, but I have a pretty hard time understanding why someone can't spend a week getting up to speed with a tool they intend to use for years to come.

tluyben2 11y ago
Yeah, I was coming here to post that Git is already painless. It's a tool you are intimately using if you're doing anything other than Hello World projects with your team; it doesn't seem too much to ask to actually learn how it works. And once you know it's painless. Edit: I was thinking about it a bit more and it's actually one of the least painful tools I have ever used on a computer...
- euyyn 11y ago
  I don't think I'm in the minority of those that know how Git works and still find it one of the most painful tools out there. The interface should be designed with UX in mind, and Git's CLI wasn't.
  - tluyben2 11y ago
    I guess we worked with different tools... But what UX are you referring to when you talk about the git cli? What is painful about it (answering the parents' question I guess)?
- lostsock 11y ago
  I really love how your edit is the exact opposite you original statement. Good on you for coming back and adding your further thoughts to the discussion.
rbosinger 11y ago
I still like a GUI from time to time. I use SourceTree. I can use GIT on the command-line and I'm a competent developer but I like to be able to click files and see the changes and just drag them into a commit. It may not be the fastest way, or the most advanced but it works for me.

bcg1 11y ago

Proprietary development tools are a trap. And this software is just a proprietary wrapper around a real community product. Doesn't matter if you rewrote the library for interacting with the database... standing on the shoulders of giants. Are we really at the point where "professional engineers" need to buy a GUI as a substitute for a fast, extensible, cross-platform command line tool that is so easy to use that even I could figure it out?

FooBarWidget 11y ago
So you say, but if that's what everyone thought then GPL would have won instead of MIT. In every thread, the amount of "GPL is viral" people far outnumber the GPL defenders. It's clear that most people prefer to be able to build proprietary tools on top of open source ones.
- bcg1 11y ago
  So you say, but popularity "in every thread" (whatever that means) is a silly metric. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "then GPL would have won instead of MIT". Its not a war, even if some trendy corporate wannabe hacker tries to convince you that it is so that you give him the fruits of your labor for nothing. And if it was a war... show me the MIT licensed toolchain, the MIT licensed OS, etc. I'm not hating on permissively licensed free software at all, I appreciate those who write it and give it to the world... but I'm going to call you out if you try to sow the seeds of division among hackers.

kolev 11y ago

I love it! How can I pay for it? You should've kickstarted this!

swisspol 11y ago
You can't yet, but thanks! :)

dcre 11y ago

I'm a SourceTree user on Mac. Just tried GitUp out for an hour. Here are the problems I have with SourceTree: * Slow as hell * No/bad keyboard shorts, and setting up custom ones is annoying and buggy * Uses tons of memory — it eventually gets up to 1 GB after running for a day or two, and my repos are not very big. My thoughts on GitUp: * Crazy fast (almost disarmingly so – I think it needs more visual confirmation when things happen) * Excellent commit/staging view. Reminds me of GitExtensions, a nice Git GUI for Windows * I love the focus on keyboard shortcuts. They work really well in the commit view * Map view is truly awful. I get that it's a work in progress, but I have no idea what its organizing principle is. Too much pointless whitespace. It radically overprivileges old branches and commits. I don't see a way to focus on what I did most recently. * The list of commits (Cmd+D) in the map view is useless

kohanz 11y ago
> Here are the problems I have with SourceTree: > * Slow as hell Good to know I'm not the only one with this issue.
- joshschreuder 11y ago
  There have been serious issues with performance in the 1.6 releases (including Windows). There are a few Git specific things if you're running Git < v2 that you can try: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4485059/git-bash-is-extremely-slow-in-windows-7-x64/24045966#24045966 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4485059/git-bash-is-extr... And in Sourcetree, set options under Options -> Diff, set Size Limit (Text) to 128KB and Size Limit (Binary) to 1024KB.
swisspol 11y ago
Thanks for trying GitUp and for the feedback! > The list of commits (Cmd+D) in the map view is useless Could you provide feedback on http://forums.gitup.co http://forums.gitup.co about what you are specifically trying to do or what your workflow is?
- dcre 11y ago

cheald 11y ago

It's kind of amusing to me how the pendulum has swung, and we're now producing OS X-only developer software. But then, I'm an oddball who works on Windows as my shell with the real work happening on a headless Linux box via SSH and Samba for 99% of my development.

alexchamberlain 11y ago
+1 I was going to make a rather sarcastic comment that this is for "professional engineers", but is OS X only. Ubuntu on a VirtualBox on Windows for me.
- hatsix 11y ago
  How do you resolve 'executable' files in your VM? I've not been able to run node apps because executables end up getting stored in /node_modules/, but if that is on a windows share, no executable flag is stored. Resolving the FS differences has always been the biggest pain for me using windows as the core OS.
  - dikaiosune 11y ago
    I for one do all sharing of files between guest and host using Dropbox and git. I've found that shared volumes have many problems like the one you cite, and treating them like two separate machines is usually the easiest way for me. If I had two physical machines with the same configuration as my guest/host, I would use network-based sync, so that's what I do on my Windows host (gaming pc at home, laptop that needs to be work friendly) with my Arch guest VM.
  - tokenizerrr 11y ago
    Just put a samba server on the virtual machine.
    - cheald 11y ago
      This would be my vote, too. Let the VM be the self-contained dev environment, with your desktop just being a thin client to get to it.

chjohasbrouck 11y ago

There's something really satisfying about seeing a visual representation of my git repositories, but my overall impression is that I'm not going to get any productivity gains here. If you know what you're doing, CLI is just faster. I understand that it's aimed at more novice developers, but I think for those developers it's even more important to use the command line. Developers that get into the habit of using unnecessary graphical UIs always seem worse off because of it.

cgs1019 11y ago
It's not as snazzy as in the article but this alias in my .gitconfig is an integral part of my git workflow: gr = !git \ --no-pager \ log -n 16 --graph --date-order --date=short --branches \ --pretty=\ '%C(yellow bold)%h%Creset\ %Creset %C(blue bold)%d%Creset\ %C(white bold blink)%s' The 'gr' is short for 'graph'. You can tweak the -n to show more history. I actually have several of these, 'gr', 'grr', 'grrr', etc. to show more and more history.
- pimlottc 11y ago
  I think your alias might have gotten cut off; the last color tag is never reset. Also, I don't understand, why disable the pager and limit the number of entries?
swisspol 11y ago
> If you know what you're doing, CLI is just faster. This is quite true with other Git GUIs since they pretty much wrap the Git CLI and add a bunch of dialogs and whatnot, but GitUp was designed especially to avoid that. I'm a big user of the CLI myself, so the last thing I wanted was to build a Git client with a slower interaction model :) Between the keyboard shortcuts and the fact it deals directly with the repo database, GitUp is actually faster than the CLI in a number of cases. Experienced Git users do notice it on Twitter and on the GitUp forums. One example from my workflow: just rebasing my work branch is instantaneous in GitUp while the Git CLT takes a couple seconds (the UX being as fast in both cases to perform the operation, so a net gain for sure). YMMV of course and you can totally use GitUp for some operations and Git CLI for some others.

neil_s 11y ago

I needed something like this when I was starting out, and still occasionally do. Obviously once you've had a few dozen commits you get a hang of things, but initially, the visualisation can help a lot. For my co-founder who's just getting started with software engineering practices like version control, I recommended she use ungit (https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit)

mgold 11y ago

It saves snapshots of you git history. So we have version control... for our version control? Slick.

hwstar 11y ago

Just couldn't resist... I've fallen and I can't GitUp

ExpiredLink 11y ago

SVN makes version control painless.

tb303 11y ago

Git makes git painless

erikb 11y ago

Huge disadvantage that it's only for OSX. I don't know but I think the most people who can't already handle git should be on Windows, right? Or on the web. That's an attempt to be the best tool ever for people who don't know git yet and it's not aiming at them. That's really a pity, because I hope it would succeed.

copsarebastards 11y ago

To be honest, git is already relatively painless. What problems does this solve?

barbs 11y ago

Looks interesting. I think speed is absolutely important when it comes to version-control interfaces. It was one of the main reasons Linus created it in the first place (as opposed to SVN), and I'd argue it's important to maintain flow. My current git interface is "tig", a curses-based command-line client, which I enjoy for its speed and simplicity. Gitup looks appealing for similar reasons.

masnick 11y ago

This looks great. BTW I don't get all the negativity in the comments about Mac-only tools. A huge number of developers use Macs specifically for well-designed third party software with *nix goodness. I wish other platforms had the same quality of third party software, but they just don't. This is mostly because it is much more difficult to make money selling software for other platforms, for whatever reason. In any case, I don't see the justification for ragging on someone for developing for (1) the platform they choose to use themselves and (2) the only platform where indie devs can make any money.

karmakaze 11y ago

I've tried to use GitX and SourceTree in my workflow and always end up going back to gitk. There's always some information, view or action I can do in gitk that I can't make the others do. I find git from the command line to be the most painless. Everything else is always the third thing after gitk and command-line. Seeing multiple stashes used to be a great extra feature, then I just stopped using stashes.

Sbn 11y ago

Windows + Linux is still ~80% of the developer share according to Stackoverflow surveys, so this might not be the best direction to spend effort

dallanlee 11y ago
That may be true, however OS X users actually spend money on apps.

shroukkhan 11y ago

only thing i can think is why is this not a webapp usable with any git server..like github?someone should get to it !!

dallanlee 11y ago

I think your choice, swisspol, to use the 'free-with-in-app-purchase' model is the right one. You're selling to OS X users, who are willing to actually spend money on apps and software, and it allows us to use an app and then decide if we want to buy it. All that really needs to be said is, "GitUp is free with lots of capability to get things done. But to speed up your workflow even more and use all of its features, it offers an in-app purchase to upgrade." Plus, we as OS X users are used to noticing that little 'in-app purchases' note on apps and don't think it's a "slap in the face". I just hope that it will be available on the Mac App Store. I trust apps most that are sold on the App Store and I always look there first. I tie my card to my iTunes account or even have gift card money ready to make a purchase. Also, I can see when it was updated, what others say about it in reviews and share it quickly and easily. Just my thoughts, @swisspol

hobarrera 11y ago

`man git` make git painless. And it works on almost any platform. I've also got to say I dislike how this makes history rewriting so simple, advertises it so much, but shows no warning as to the complications this can bring (anybody else using this repo will suffer greatly on the next pull!). Of course, that's explains in the man page.

lectrick 11y ago

The entire philosophy of this goes against Git. Editing history (including comments) without a new commit is basically a revert to mutable history, which means shared git history suddenly becomes a problem.