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Slant community chat on Discourse| 24 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Platforms | Price | Pro Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 The Command Line· · · | 117 | 7 | – | – | – |
| #2 SmartGit· · · | 59 | 10 | Linux, Mac, Windows | $79-$47.40/user (perpetual) or $5.99-$3.59/user (monthly subscription) | Conflict Solver and Compare (freely editable); Pull Requests, Comments for BitBucket, GitHub and provider independent (Distributed Review add-on); Git-Flow; highly configurable views, external tools |
| #3 Magit· · · | 17 | 0 | Any supported by Emacs (Linux, Windows,macOS,*BSD...) | – | – |
| #4 Tower 2· · · | 49 | 14 | Windows; OSX | – | – |
| #5 SourceTree· · · | 108 | 37 | Windows, macOS | Free | – |
| #6 GitKraken· · · | 24 | 7 | Windows, Mac, Linux | Free / $49 per yr / $39-$25 per yr (teams) / $79 per yr (offline) | Support, Merge Conflict Editor, Multiple Profiles, GitHub Enterprise Integration, Commercial Use, Offline License Server |
Pro Fast and straightforward
There's no additional layer of abstraction.
Pro Gives a better understanding of how git functions
By using the git from the command line, it's possible to learn how it functions and how to get the desired result.
Pro The most powerful way to use git
Using CLI gives access to every single git function available.
Con Recalling is more difficult than recognizing
Although there's autocompletion for commands, it still requires recalling at least the beginning of a command while all that's required using a GUI is recognizing the desired outcome.
Con Steeper barrier to entry as compared to a GUI solution
Since you have to learn all the different commands and you don't have the visual help that a GUI app gives you, it has a rather steep learning curve.
Pro Fully featured
Has really many features like the side-by-side index+HEAD+work tree diff tool integrated as well as a conflict view that really helps.
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 re...
Con Some git functionality has been renamed
In order to preserve the same interface across Git and Mercurial, some naming compromises have been made.
Pro Uninterrupted workflow for common tasks
Simple tasks, such as commits, can quickly be made without leaving the editor.
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.
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 getti...
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.
Con Expensive
Costs $59 USD.
Con It requires separate licenses for MacOS and Windows
Usually a lot of products that are on MacOS and Windows let you use the same license for both platforms. Tower forces you to pay two licences if you are in this case (the unique benefit is a 20% of discount on the second platform).
Pro Free
Free to use without registration. After 30 days, it requires registration (which is also free).
Pro Comprehensive layout
SourceTree has 3 main repository views: file status, history and search. File status view shows status of currently selected repo. It's split in 2 areas - file list and diff-view. History view tracks changes made to the currently selected repository. It's divided in 3 sections. T...
Con Slow with large repos or quick operations
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. Often you're not going to know what you want, so the visual diffs etc help massively.
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...
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.
Con Not open source
It is free but is not open source.
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 nowa...
Pro Visual commit mode
Allows for interactive staging of files or hunks and deleting of unstaged or non-git tracked files. Hunk size slider allows staging/unstaging individual lines, letting you stage pieces of a file easily.
Pro Fast GUI
Responsive even with thousands of files or large binary like files
Con Clumsy staging workflow
The staging workflow in GitX-dev is kind of clumsy and unintuitive.
Pro Allows doing complex things without memorizing git
Git usage beyond basic checkout/commit is arcane; GitUp lets you do things in git in seconds that would take you a half hour of research with the command line.
Pro Full undo
You can backup, or edit commits, if you make a mistake.
Con OS X Only
Only available for OSX, so if you are used to working with different OSes and you want the same tools in each of them, it's impossible to have that with GitUp.
Con Font size is not adjustable
Tiny font not good for those with poor vision.
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.
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.
Pro Available in Homebrew
Can easily be installed with homebrew simply by running brew install tig
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.
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.
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.
Pro Uninterrupted workflow for common tasks
Simple tasks, such as commits, can quickly be made without leaving the editor.
Con Poor documentation
The documentation is rather poor and not very helpful.
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).
Pro Great integration with GitHub services
This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team.
Con Limited
Can't handle complex tasks.
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.
Pro Powerful diffs
Built in diff tool is excellent. Displays changes side-by-side and makes it easy to revert individual lines with the click on an x.
Pro Integrated with powerful IDE
This means no switching between tools.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Free and Open Source
Ungit is open source software available under the MIT Licence.
Pro Accessible on remote servers via a web browser
Ungit can be hosted on a remote server and can be easily accessed via a web browser.
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.
Pro Visibly more compact overview output than many other options
When you're using it to scan a long list of changes, you're able to see more of the list without pagination, as there is not this huge buffer of whitespace between each entry.
Pro Comes with Git
It's a part of the git package, so no additional application is necessary, and it is developed right alongside git itself.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Free software
This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed.
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Linux, Mac and Windows.
Con Limited feature set
You sometimes need to touch the terminal in order to get certain things done.
Pro Native GitHub GUI support via GitHub Eclipse plugin
GitEye can be integrated with the GitHub Eclipse plugin to have support for GitHub.
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.
Con Poor documentation
The documentation isn't very detailed and does not do a good job at explaining everything.
Pro Efficient stage/commit workflow
Inspired from emacs magit workflow, vimagit provides an efficient stage/commit workflow. In the case you have a lot of work, in multiple files, in your git repository: vimagit makes it easy to split it in multiple commits.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Clean, minimalistic UI
The UI is clean and intuitive. The top bar displays the current branch, buttons for pushing or pulling, the target branch and a search box for searching through the history. The main view is divided into three parts: a file tree, a section that shows the modified files with details and a section t...
Pro Easy to use
Gitbox is very easy to use. You can push, pull and commit all with a single click.
Con No diff-viewer
Diff-viewing requires an external tool.
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