What is the best alternative to GitExtensions?

Question

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score 39 · Answer 1

tig

Top Pro

Allows you to stay in the terminal

If you prefer to do most of your development inside the terminal, changing windows to move to a GUI git client can be annoying. Since tig runs inside the terminal, that's avoided. See More

Top Con

Steeper barrier to entry as compared to a GUI solution

Since you have to get used to working in the terminal (if you are not already used to doing that) and learn the commands, it has a steeper learning curve than GUI clients which are usually more intuitive and easier to grasp. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Top Pro

Vim-like bindings

Top Pro

Available in Homebrew

Can easily be installed with homebrew simply by running brew install tig See More

Top Pro

Works on any platform

39 3

score 69 · Answer 2

Magit

Top Pro

Uninterrupted workflow for common tasks

Simple tasks, such as commits, can quickly be made without leaving the editor. See More

Top Con

Useful only for people who use Emacs

Magit is only useful if your text editor of choice is Emacs. It wouldn't really make any sense to open up emacs just to run Magit if you use another editor. See More

Top Pro

Diffs are easy

Since it's integrated with Emacs, diffs are very easy to fix. You can jump right to any file you want to fix as soon as it comes up in the logs or in the status view. See More

Top Pro

Easy to remember mnemonics

You can easily learn the mnemonics for the most common tasks and use them to your advantage to speed up your workflow. See More

Top Pro

Stage hunks or even just parts of a hunk using a single key press

In Magit staging a hunk or even just part of a hunk is very easy. Magit also implements several other "apply variants" in addition to staging and unstaging. For example: you can also discard or reverse a change, or apply it to the working tree. See More

Top Pro

Multiple buffers are used to show contextual information

Top Pro

Blame information can be viewed inline with the file

Top Pro

Better visualization and interactive workflow

Top Pro

Powerful rebasing

Top Pro

Available in Homebrew

brew install magit See More

Specs

Platforms:Any supported by Emacs (Linux, Windows,macOS,*BSD...)

License:GPLv3

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69 11

score 17 · Answer 3

Ungit

Top Pro

Free and Open Source Software

Ungit is open source software available under the MIT Licence. See More

Top Con

Exposes git commands to your network

No authentication, if someone can communicate with your computer on the port this is running on, they can execute any git command they want on your repos as well as view your filesystem's folders. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Windows, Linux, and OS X. See More

Top Con

Setup is not user-friendly

Ungit is distributed as an NPM package and requires git and Node.js to be installed on your system before you can run it. Ungit must be launched by running ungit in a command line terminal. See More

Top Pro

Optional Integration with Modern Text Editors

Ungit can be integrated directly into modern text editors, Atom, Brackets, and VS Code. See More

Top Pro

Web-based interface

Ungit is web-based, meaning you can run it on your cloud/pure shell machine and then use the UI from your browser. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Price:Free

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17 5

score 703 · Answer 4

SmartGit

Top Pro

Free for non-commercial use

SmartGit can be used free of charge by Open Source developers, teachers and their students, or for hobby, non-paid usage. See More

Top Con

Proprietary license

Not an open source license. See More

Top Pro

Uncluttered UI

SmartGit has a rather clean and uncluttered user interface. All the most useful tools and information are displayed at all times or are otherwise just a couple of clicks away. All repositories are displayed in the sidebar and through a tabbed interface you can view various info about a specific repository (files, branches, branch graph, etc). The most used git commands like pull, push, sync, commit and merge are always available on top. See More

Top Con

Diff display doesn't show long lines well

If changes are made in very long lines, the diff display is hard to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

The clean and intuitive UI makes SmartGit very easy even for people with no prior experience with Git, even after reading just a bit on how Git works and what the main commands are. See More

Top Con

Currently lacks support for git subtree

It's a useful feature when developing several independent project modules in parallel. See More

Top Pro

Great overview of the project/repository's log

SmartGit's log viewer displays the full commit history in a clean UI. This can be filtered to only show commits matching a certain criterion (e.g. branch). See More

Top Con

Absolute git beginners will find it very complicated

Top Pro

Supports GitFlow

GitFlow provides a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. SmartGit allows for setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive UI

At first glance, the sub windows are poorly organized. For example, there isn't an easy way to navigate the files in the repository. It's drastically differently designed than other popular source control clients. See More

Top Pro

Smart embedded difference viewer

When the changes affect only a few characters in a line of code, the embedded difference viewers in the majority of competitors (such as SourceTree) show the whole line as removed and re-added. SmartGit highlights the characters that have been removed / added, so they are easier to read. See More

Top Con

Some git functionality has been renamed

In order to preserve the same interface across Git and Mercurial, some naming compromises have been made so that the various VCS it supports are all consistent with each other. See More

Top Pro

Supports Mercurial & SVN

Apart from Git, SmartGit supports both Mercurial and SVN via a git bridge. See More

Top Con

Written in Java

Top Pro

Has the most features and most logical layout

Compared to gitk, git gui, SourceTree, GitKraken. See More

Top Pro

Auto-detects repositories on disk

You don't have to search all the repositories when trying out SmartGit the 1st time, but it finds all of them magically. See More

Top Pro

Portable version for Windows is available

SmartGit also has a portable bundle that can be downloaded and can be run from external devices (such as a flash drive for example) or to test-drive without leaving traces on the machine after removing. See More

Top Pro

Can be integrated with Github, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Atlassian Stash

Using OAuth, you can connect SmartGit with your accounts in Github, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Stash and access the remote repositories there. You can then clone, fork, commit or push to your remote repositories from inside SmartGit. You can also view and manage pull requests for your open source projects from SmartGit. See More

Top Pro

Auto stash

If normal Git commands would abort because of local modifications, SmartGit can stash them and apply later after the command ran successfully, e.g. a rebase. See More

Top Pro

Extendable with external tools

External tools (which have a command line support) can be integrated to be used to open/view files, for diff or as conflict solvers. E.g. editors like Notepad++ or VS Code, p4merge to diff images or kdiff3 as diff view/conflict solver. See More

Top Pro

Syntax coloring for many languages

The built-in compare and conflict solver has syntax coloring with customizable colors. See More

Top Pro

Every git command is available through the GUI

Not every, but nearly all. See More

Top Pro

Best submodule workflow on the market

You can easily update submodules from the containing repo, unlike other GUIs that require you to open each repo separately. Saves a lot of time when working on a monorepo managed using submodules. See More

Top Pro

Great filtering options

The file list view can be tweaked and filtered in many ways (e.g. regex can be used). See More

Top Pro

Log with fine-grained display of branches

There is no option of just showing the current branch or all branches, but you can select very fine-grained what branches/forks should be displayed. See More

Top Pro

Can rearrange Repository window and Log window views/panels

This allows great layouts as desired. See More

Top Pro

Allows rearranging views

If screen space is limited, one can stack some views onto another. 2 layouts are available - "Main" and "Review" - with independent view positions. See More

Top Pro

Great support

Support responds quickly and they genuinely try to help you! If it's a bug, it will often be fixed within days. See More

Top Pro

Log: ability to see dangling commits and stash commits

Rebased, but not yet garbage-collected commits can be easily made accessible again, e.g. after a reset hard. See More

Top Pro

The best multi-repository support

Can make a repo group containing multiple repos; it acts as a meta repo. Can submit selected files from multiple repos in a repo group in one commit action; uses the same commit message in all the repo commits. See More

Top Pro

GPG support

GPG in SmartGit makes for added security. See More

Top Pro

Journal dedicated for current branch history

Showing commits from the current branch, its remote branch and one auxiliary branch. Independent of the that, there is a log window available that allows to view all (other) commits. See More

Top Pro

Can edit file in workspace or index directly from the compare view

This is very useful when reviewing files before committing and finding a needed quick tweak. See More

Top Pro

Excellent dark theme

And support for own themes. See More

Top Pro

Evolution submission program

See http://smartgit.userecho.com/ See More

Top Pro

Can detect issue numbers and links to the issue tracker

Support GitBugTraq file : https://github.com/mstrap/bugtraq See More

Top Pro

Supports selecting open issues from JIRA

Allows you to select the desired issue, instead of having to do it manually. See More

Top Pro

Offers life-time updates

One payment, get updates for all future versions. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Mac, Windows

Price:$209-$84/user (lifetime) or $79-$47.40/user (annual) or $5.99-$3.59/user (monthly subscription)

Free for:hobby usage, open source developers, public education institutions (teachers, students) and public charity institutions

Issue Tracker support:Atlassian JIRA

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703 163

score 22 · Answer 5

gmaster

Top Pro

Semantic Diff and Merge Tools for most languages

This includes C#, Java, C, C++, VB.Net, and Delphi. See More

Top Con

Requires registration/account to use

Top Pro

Visual

Lays out the repository in a visual way that makes sense and paints a clear picture of what is going on. See More

Top Pro

Native

Not based on web technologies so it doesn't carry the same weight and performance implications. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:TBD

Price:Free

Multi Language Support:No

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22 0

score 16 · Answer 6

git-cola

Top Pro

Free software

This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed. See More

Top Con

Limited feature set

You sometimes need to touch the terminal in order to get certain things done. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Linux, Mac and Windows. See More

Top Pro

Full unicode support

Top Pro

Minimalist interface

Top Pro

Available in Homebrew

Can be easily installed through homebrew by running brew install git-cola. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:GPLv2

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16 7

score 601 · Answer 7

GitKraken

Top Pro

Beautiful user interface

It's modern and beautiful, it looks clean and refined. It's simple: the most used features (pull, push, branch, stash, commit) are accessible in one click, and are the only buttons. The other features aren't in complicated menus nor in hundreds of buttons, but rather displayed when you right-click on something. It gives more space to the commits, i.e. the most important things. In fact, you can collapse or reduce the other menus/windows. It displays the current path (project, branch) on an horizontal (clickable) bar at the top. It's just a matter of taste but I prefer this to the traditional "tree" view. It has undo and redo buttons on the main window. It supports some drag-and-drop gestures (for example: drag-and-droping the local branch to the remote one pushes it). See More

Top Con

Must log into GitKraken servers to use the free version

All functionality is disabled unless you register for a free account and remain logged in. There is the $99/user/yr Enterprise option. It allows you to deploy a Linux License Server in an air-gapped/offline environment. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Built on top of Electron, so it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. See More

Top Con

Has memory-related issues

Like most Electron apps, GitKraken has some memory-related issues. For starter, it requires more memory for an action than an equivalent non-Electron application. Although this should not be a problem most of the time for people who use machines with lots of RAM (after all, RAM is pretty cheap nowadays), it can have some issues when opening large repositories and there have been cases where GitKraken failed to open very large repositories or started lagging once they were opened. See More

Top Pro

Free version available

There are both pro and free versions available. The free version is pretty complete feature-wise for day-to-day operations. See More

Top Con

Not open source

It is gratis (no cost) but is not open source. The community cannot fix problems in it, audit it for security, or trust it in general. See More

Top Pro

Extremely easy to use

A lot of care has gone into trying to make GitKraken as easy and intuitive as possible and it show. Every action is quick and painless with no more user interaction than necessary. For example, switching to another branch is as easy as a double-click on the sidebar. See More

Top Con

Crashes once in a while

Under specific circumstances, like resetting 5000+ changes, the GUI will crash. See More

Top Pro

Offers a simple way of undoing mistakes

GitKraken has simple undo/redo buttons that work the same way you'd expect in any other software. See More

Top Con

Not free for commercial use

The free version of GitKraken cannot be used in commercial projects. See More

Top Pro

Some of the best integration with hosted version control services

GitKraken can be connected to Github, Gitlab, or Bitbucket accounts through OAuth. From that point onward most if not all actions that are related to these services can be done inside GitKraken. Things like: cloning or forking a repository, adding a remote, pushing to a remote repository hosted on these services can be done inside the app. You can even manage pull requests inside GitKraken for example. All pull requests for a certain branch for example are shown on that branch's graph. See More

Top Con

Amending merge output is a pro feature

In most cases of Merge Conflicts, users are stuck with auto-merge or manually resolving it by hand. This is because in the Free Tier, users can only (1) Keep File (ver 1), (2) Keep File (ver 2), (3) Auto-merge, or (4) Use External Merge Tool. In addition, using External Merge Tools is very limited because GitKraken (all tiers) restricts External Merge Tools to only those it managed to Auto-detect. It also does not support custom arguments for the External Tools. Modifying the merge output directly, or Selecting lines to keep/discard, is a Paid Feature. See More

Top Pro

GitFlow support out of the box

Supports GitFlow out of the box. See More

Top Con

Missing some advanced features

For example: Checkout & Hard Reset Advanced or Interactive Rebase (aka history rewrite) Progress bar indicator See More

Top Pro

Under constant improvement

A quick glance at GitKraken's release notes shows how frequently it's updated. Updates are released on a 2-4 week cycle and each one brings new features and bug fixes. See More

Top Con

Slow

Can take between 2 and 5 seconds to load a repository, if not crashing while loading See More

Top Pro

Has a FuzzyFinder

GitKraken has a fuzzy finder to switch between repos/files. See More

Top Con

Has annoying popup reminders that ask you to upgrade to the Pro version

Understandable, since nobody is entitled to use work done by others for free, but annoying nonetheless. See More

Top Pro

Good keyboard shortcuts

Top Con

No tab support

Cannot access multiple repositories in the same session. See More

Top Pro

Perfect for beginner developers

GitKraken is easy to use and is brilliant for the beginner developers See More

Top Con

No real commitement to Linux support

Infinite loop on Fedora 28, no debug feature or stacktrace available, no clear dependencies listing.... no real support on Linux. See More

Top Con

Can be confusing

Top Con

Ugly, looks like a web app

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Pricing:~$49/user/yr for Pro, ~$99/user/yr for Enterprise

Integrations:GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab

Enterprise Features:On-Premises Installation / Local Account Management

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601 237

score 66 · Answer 8

GitHub Desktop

Top Con

Limited

Can't handle complex tasks. The Help Manual advises to use command-line Git instead. See More

Top Pro

Great GitHub integration

This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Poster child for authors' programming ideology (FRP), likely the cause for the odd quirks and bugs it has. See More

Top Pro

Simple, streamlined GUI

GitHub Desktop uses an extremely simplistic two-panel view. It's not capable of complex historical visualisations like other GUIs, but it is very easy to use (especially for git novices). See More

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

Top Pro

Supports pull requests

In addition to being able to seamlessly and easily integrate with all of GitHub's features, it also supports forking and submitting pull requests on any open source project hosted on GitHub. See More

Top Con

Non-GitHub repositories are not fully supported

Since this is mainly a GitHub client, other repositories are not fully supported and with as many features and setting up a repo hosted anywhere else but GitHub is troublesome. See More

Top Con

Does not support multiple Remotes for a repo

Only allowed to assign one URL as remote. To manage/sync/fetch other remotes, use command-line Git instead. See More

Top Con

No Linux support

There's no Linux version of this client. See More

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66 51

score 409 · Answer 9

SourceTree

Top Con

Requires an account to install and use

Need an Atlassian account to install. See More

Top Pro

Informative branch visualization

In addition to color-coded branches and icons that tell if a file has been added, removed or modified, SourceTree also displays the number of commits that are ahead and behind the remote branch. See More

Top Con

Can sometimes be slow

Some operations can be slow. If you know what you want (e.g you want to touch a file, add it, commit it, and push it) you can do it much faster on the command line. However you're often not going to know what you want, so the visual diffs (for example) help massively. See More

Top Pro

Comprehensive layout

SourceTree has three main repository views: file status, history, and search. File status view shows status of currently selected repo. It's split into two areas - file list and diff-view. History view tracks changes made to the currently selected repository. It's divided into three sections. The top section has a graph with progression of commits, branches, and merges. The bottom section shows commit details, files changed, and differences committed. Search view allows looking up commit messages, users, files changes, branches, and commit SHA. There's also a toolbar at the top that allows switching between the three views, as well as giving access to git commands (such as commit, checkout, reset, stash, add, remove, fetch, pull, push, branch, merge, and tag). See More

Top Con

Always slow

Top Pro

Simple yet powerful

SourceTree allows you to do advanced Git operations while making them straight-forward for those who are still adjusting to Git. See More

Top Con

Terrible for resolving merge conflicts

It's hard to tell when you are in a conflict state, let alone what to do if it happens. See More

Top Pro

Supports Git, Mercurial, and Subversion

Allows managing Git & Mercurial repos side by side. It even allows Subversion interoperability via git-svn or hgsubversion plugins which set up a bridge between either Git and SVN or Mercurial and SVN respectively. See More

Top Con

Unstable and terrible UX

The Windows version of SourceTree is riddled with bugs, causing some users to find it unusable. These include failing to refresh, frequent freezing, and slow performance. The recent redesign (February 2016) has made the UI difficult to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Git-flow and Hg-flow support

Git-flow and Hg-flow provide a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. SourceTree allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model. Clicking the Git-flow / Hg-flow toolbar button will give you access to actions for starting or finishing features, releases or hotfixes depending on the current state of repository. See More

Top Con

Does not allow offline installation

Upon installation, the splash screen prompts you to login. There used to be a workaround for you to manually deploy this application in an offline environment, but they've patched it as of 2.0.20.1. It now does a dial-home on each start-up. Since it cannot reach the server, it throws an error to the user, and raises alerts to compliance. Atlassian's final decision was that they are not going to support this feature at all. Quoted from their staff: "We’ve never officially supported any form of pre-installation on device management capabilities. [...] As you know, last year, we removed the notion licensing and asked our developers to register the product by creating an Atlassian account. That said, SourceTree has always been a tool for the individual (emphasis mine) developer." See More

Top Pro

Quick setup

Once installed, SourceTree will automatically try to look for and set up repos that are worked on. SourceTree will also detect if git-flow is used and what is the current development state as long as default git-flow branch names are used. The software tracks all relevant repositories in the bookmark's window. Repositories can be added to the list by creating new ones, adding a local folder, supplying a clone URL or integrating with remote services such as Bitbucket or GitHub. See More

Top Con

No dark theme

No dark theme for Windows, however MacOS version does have a dark theme. See More

Top Pro

Built-in integration with Stash and Bitbucket

Sourcetree integrates with repositories hosted on Bitbucket, Stash, GitHub, and Kiln. See More

Top Con

Chews CPU

Top Pro

Allows chunks and lines selection during commit

SourceTree automatically splits the changes to be committed into chunks allowing committing (or discarding) each chunk separately. Furthermore, the user can even select specific lines. This greatly increases the flexibility of the user in that matter. See More

Top Con

The UI of version 2.0+ is so terrible

Tab looks good if you have no more than five repos. If you have a lot, you will know my pain. The source tree will not remember the order of the tab you drag. Everytime you restart the app, it will go back to whatever it likes. See More

Top Pro

Supports Git LFS

Top Con

Browsing folders is troublesome

Choosing files of specific folders for check-in is troublesome. See More

Top Pro

git terminal

Comes with own built-in git termnal independant from other git installations and updated regulary. It's especialy good for git beginners who would like to use advanced git functions, but are not ready yet. See More

Top Con

Login problems

Frequently unable to log in, despite the correct password. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Not even possible to change the password

There are tickets about this issue sitting there for years and marked as medium priority. I experienced this since version 1.8. Up until now, there has been no fix. If your company's policy is going to enforce you to change your password, it means you need to remove all the repos and clone them again everytime you change the password. This is the worst ever experience. See More

Top Con

Not always recognizes changed files

Seems to not always recognize changed files, which means that they will not be pushed to remote origin either. This means if you switch branches, the files will be overwritten and you lose your progress. Very annoying. See More

Top Con

Crashes frequently

Stops responding every 5 minutes. See More

Top Con

Often rebuilds the graph visually noisy

E.g. after a reset command, the graph disappears and reappears after a few moments. See More

Top Con

Requires users to be online when starting up

As of 2.3.5, it needs to dial home on every start-up, else it raises alerts to compliance. See More

Top Con

Blame MS Office's word correction dictionary to be the source of the slowness while it's not

It's so obvious that ever since 2.0, it will try refreshing each of the repo a few minutes. If you have a lot then it will drive you crazy. When you try to expand a branch node, it refreshes. Try again, OOPS, it refreshed again. Sometimes, it will take you five minutes to select the node you want. See More

Top Con

Varied speeds across different versions

For example, the Windows version is quite slow is comparison to the Mac version. See More

Top Con

Information density can be a bit much

It's possible to become overwhelmed with the information density presented in SourceTree. This is especially the case in history view, as it includes a lot of data presented in various ways. Though this is great for getting a comprehensive overview of everything that's happening in one place, it can take some getting used to. See More

Top Con

No auto stash

Top Con

CRLF on Windows is a nightmare

There is a bug in 'Discard hunk' and 'Discard lines' constantly interrupting the work flow with inserting wrong line endings. Click here for more details. See More

Top Con

Has trouble with Github's Yubikey integration

When your 2FA is a hardware key, it is difficult to find a way to bring up the ability to use anything but a pre-programmed password function on the Yubikey, which doesn't add much to security all things considered what a hardware key is supposed to do. See More

Top Con

Can't select install location

You can't select the install location (anymore). This is terrible for enterprise environments. It insists to install into "Users/<Name>/AppData/Local". What? Where? Why not "Recycle Bin" or Windows Temp? See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS

Price:Free

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409 310

score 9 · Answer 10

fugitive (via vim)

Top Pro

Great visualization and interactive workflow

The visualization and workflow are great in fugitive. You can do side-by-side or even intra-line diffs all without having to leave your text editor. See More

Top Con

Poor documentation

The documentation is rather poor and not very helpful. See More

Top Pro

Uninterrupted workflow for common tasks

Simple tasks, such as commits, can quickly be made without leaving the editor. See More

Top Pro

Seamlessly "Dive into Diffs" to trace the origin & intent of code

git blame only shows the last change (e.g. a variable rename), but how do you find the origin of the code? :GBlame to open blame window o on the relevant line to "git show" the commit select a diff line from a previous version of the file, and hit o to open it repeat 1 - 3, jumping back through history to find the origin of the line See More

9 0

score 11 · Answer 11

GitEye

Top Pro

Native GitHub GUI support via GitHub Eclipse plugin

GitEye can be integrated with the GitHub Eclipse plugin to have support for GitHub. See More

Top Con

Poor documentation

The documentation isn't very detailed and does not do a good job at explaining everything. See More

Top Pro

Custom commands can be defined that allow launching third-party tools

If you are using a lot of third-part tools besides GitEye, you can set up shortcuts to launch them easily from inside GitEye, greatly improving your workflow. See More

Top Pro

Has a graphical compare and merge tool

Top Pro

Great for those starting out with git

11 1

score 67 · Answer 12

Fork

Top Pro

Fast and easy to use

Top Con

Hard to see which repos have uncommitted changes at a glance.

Have to click the repo names one by one to see the uncommitted changes. Remember Sourcetree Mac client having an indicator showing the number of uncommited changes. See More

Top Pro

Dark theme support

Top Con

Still a young client, thus so not as feature rich

This git GUI client is quite young compared to industry old-timers like git-tower 2 or SourceTree. So it's not as feature rich as you'd like. Still a very capable client for a simple day-to-day work. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable when staging line-by-line changes

This feature is superior to the one that is implemented by SourceTree as it does not reset the file scroll view to the top of the file after each stage. If you do feature-specific commits after some time of development - it's very important to be able to easily compose the commit from different line-based changes. See More

Top Pro

Highlights the difference within a line

Top Pro

Comfortable keyboard shortcuts

Top Pro

Merge Conflict Resolution is great

Top Pro

Smart Diff is very handy

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac

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67 14

score 47 · Answer 13

Tower

Top Pro

Pretty, modern-looking user interface

T2 has a good-looking interface and consists of 3 main views - services, repositories and repository. Services view for managing integrations with hosting services like GitHub, Bitbucket and Beanstalk. Repositories view for organizing local and remote repositories into folders and getting general overview about them. Repo view that consists of two main subviews: Working copy view shows modified files and their diff and allows wrapping up changes in a commit. History shows commits alongside metadata and projects file structure. Additionally, it allows performing various tasks such as merging branches via drag & drop, search allows searching by message, commit hash, author, committer and file and there's a quick open that allows fuzzy-searching for folder names. See More

Top Con

Doesn't have a built in diff

Top Pro

Offers a visual way to solve conflicts

T2 shows conflicting files, their authors and the commit that made changes. It then allows selecting which files should be used in the final result. See More

Top Con

Can only display a single repo at a time

There's no quick way of switching between repositories (such as tabs). See More

Top Pro

Git-flow integration

Git-flow provide a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. T2 allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model. See More

Top Con

Inefficient UI

In order to not overwhelm the users with information, much of the information is either hidden by default or requires navigating to a different section to access. See More

Top Pro

The UI only shows the needed commands at a time

Tower covers most of the daily tasks that a developer may need to complete. It shows only what you need for the most common tasks without overwhelming the user. See More

Top Con

Stability issues on Windows

On a simple repository, the UI often lags or freezes. See More

Top Pro

Very polished user interface

Top Con

Expensive

Costs $69. See More

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support Subtrees

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac

Trial Period:30 days

See All Experiences

47 12

score 102 · Answer 14

Visual Studio

Top Pro

Official IDE developed by Microsoft

If a project type or a platform is available for C#, it's available in Visual Studio. Some IDEs and code editors may cover some project types, but Microsoft always starts with VS. If you work with a cross-platform technology like ASP.NET MVC, it matters less. If you work with Windows-only technologies like UWP or WPF, you have no choice really. See More

Top Con

Slow

Visual Studio is very slow if you don't have a decent system, but even then it can still be slow. Once you get past the first few minutes of slowness, it runs fine, but this should not be acceptable for a professional-grade IDE. This can be caused by a multitude of factors, such as extensions. See More

Top Pro

Free Community edition

Community edition is almost Pro edition, with just a few exceptions. Unlike old Express editions, it supports plugins. See More

Top Con

Professional Pricing is a bit steep

The professional edition's pricing is endearing since it costs more than IntelliJ, however, you wouldn't need that if you're not developing for a enterprise. See More

Top Pro

Excellent and broad range of plugins

The plugin development ecosystem is very mature and covers a lot of use cases. For example, it is often easy to find a plugin which allows you to have the keybindings of your preferred editor. See More

Top Pro

Supported by ReSharper and other plugins

Code productivity tools improve code editing experience greatly, provide static code analysis, refactorings, navigation etc. They are considered by many developers as essential. See More

Top Pro

Partial cross-platform support

Visual Studio runs on Windows and macOS, so even if you develop on a Mac you can still develop with Visual Studio. See More

Top Pro

Supports every kind of .NET development, every project type

Top Pro

Product backlog

In agile development teams one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to team mates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project. See More

Top Pro

Cloud storage

Your Visual Studio Online account gives you a place to store your code, backlog, and other project data with no servers to deploy, configure, or manage. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Mac

Auto Complete:yes

Multi Language Support:yes

Git:yes

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102 33

score 107 · Answer 15

TortoiseGit

Top Pro

Open source

Licensed under GPL. See More

Top Con

Windows only

No Linux or OSX versions available. See More

Top Pro

Windows context menu integration

Context menu enables access to common commands quickly. See More

Top Con

May clutter your Windows Explorer

If you have synced your dev folder to a cloud service, TortoiseGit's git status file icons will override your cloud provider's icons. See More

Top Pro

Can parse and provide a pretty log of all commits or filter by branch

Top Con

Buggy file status icons

The file icons are also often buggy and do not reflect its true status. Often times the icon is missing and makes you think a file or folder is untracked, when it is already staged, or sometimes even already committed and pushed. See More

Top Pro

Convinient blaming tool

Very friendly blame tool. Easy to walk in the history of a file. See More

Top Con

Renames git commands

Makes things hard to find for people used to the git CLI. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

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107 66

score 25 · Answer 16

Git for Windows

Top Con

Terrible UI

Although it does most of what needs to be done, the actions are not obvious. It is definitely not user-friendly. See More

Top Pro

The most powerful way to use git

By using the CLI, one is given access to every single git function available, thus providing complete flexibility in managing git. See More

Top Pro

Offers three kinds of interfaces

Git for Windows includes a command-line interface in the form of Git BASH, a graphical interface in the form of Git GUI and a context menu interface. Git BASH offers the complete power of git, Git GUI aims to cover all git functionality (though it falls a bit short) in a graphical way and the context menu enables quick access to simple commands. See More

Top Pro

Great community support

Since most devs invoke git via CLI, there's a higher chance of getting an answer to a CLI-based git problem than that which is GUI-based. See More

Top Pro

Gives a better overview of how git functions

By using the git from the command line, it's possible to learn how it functions and how best to get the desired result. See More

Top Pro

Can generate an RSA key pair

It's possible to generate an RSA key pair using Git BASH. Instructions on how to do so can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Visual representation of commit-history is possible

Even a visual representation of various branches and how they're merged is possible. To visualize history: git log --graph See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

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25 20

score 7 · Answer 17

gitk

Top Con

Cannot commit

The user needs to use a different Git client (GUI or otherwise) to commit changes. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Con

Does not automatically update

The user must press F5 to refresh the view as there is no automatic update available. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Free

Gitk is a free and open source tool. It forms part of the official git suite. See More

Top 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. See More