When comparing gitk vs git-cola, the Slant community recommends git-cola for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for Windows?” git-cola is ranked 20th while gitk is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose git-cola is:
This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Visibly more compact overview output than many other options
When using gitk to scan a long list of changes, the user is able to see more of the list without pagination, as there is no huge buffer of whitespace between each entry.
Pro Fast
Since it's pretty minimalistic and does not contain a lot of features (for example, it can't commit), it's quite fast.
Pro Free
Gitk is a free and open source tool. It forms part of the official git suite.
Pro Comes with Git
Gitk is a part of the git package, so no additional application is necessary: it is developed right alongside git itself.
Pro Easy to use
Pro Free software
This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed.
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Linux, Mac and Windows.
Pro Full unicode support
Pro Minimalist interface
Pro Available in Homebrew
Can be easily installed through homebrew by running brew install git-cola
.
Cons
Con Cannot commit
The user needs to use a different Git client (GUI or otherwise) to commit changes.
Con Does not automatically update
The user must press F5 to refresh the view as there is no automatic update available.
Con Limited feature set
You sometimes need to touch the terminal in order to get certain things done.