Recs.
Updated
SmartGit is very handy at viewing diffs, logs, history and deleting/staging working copy files.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Free for non-commercial use (with some restrictions)
SmartGit can be used free of charge by Open Source developers, teachers and their students, or for hobby, non-paid usage. However, some features are only available with paid versions, like JIRA/GitHub Entreprise/Bitbucket integration, distributed review, DeepGit.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Pro Has the most features and most logical layout
Compared to gitk, git gui, SourceTree, GitKraken.
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.
Cons
Con Absolute git beginners will find it very complicated
If you're just starting out with git, SmartGit might feel overwhelming as it does not dumb-down the complexities of git but exposes everything.
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.
Con Handling of git repository security tokens & credentials
The handling of git repository security tokens & credentials is bad: one usually has to ask google, read discussions and then start to use try & error to get working access.
You would expect much more from software that calls itself smart.
Con The top 5-10 git Use Cases are not intuitive without knowing git
SmartGit fails to abstract git in a way that makes it easy / intuitive to use. For software that calls itself smart, you would expect someone who has worked with any version of control software for years to get up to speed quickly with SmartGit - without studying the Git Manual.
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.
Con It can be slow and resource hungry
It was written in Java, which is known for being a resource hog, and it can be slow on some machines, as well as prone to errors if developers are not very experienced.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Con Forced integration of other services
There's "glo boards" services which I doubt anyone use. They are integrated into GitKraken, and commercial licenses includes payment for that - no matter if you're not going to use it.
Con No "pay once, use forever" license
There's no "pay once, use forever" license (one of "PRO" cases is false here). You should pay every month, or every year, to continue using this software.
Con Free license is too restrictive
Free license doesn't allow to use it with non-public (e.g. local) repositories since version 6.0.
Con Perspective views can be limiting
Being able to see everything at a glance is important. Some updates, however, change the perspective views which are rather fixed. It lacks a more open way to add and remove windows to create your own perspectives as these changes between versions can disrupt a nice workflow.
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con Irritating starting screen
The start screen gets on top of all and every window that's open until SmartGit itself opens up (which takes some time).
Con External log window
A "Journal" view is available in the main window, though, and focuses on the current branch (incl. remote branch) and one additional ("auxiliary") branch.
Con Auto clean-up consumes a lot of resources
Leaving SmartGit idle for some time will launch project clean-up, which uses a lot of PC processing power, making it completely unusable until it finishes. This can be disabled from the options menu, but should have been disabled by default.