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| 10 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Platforms | Price | Pro Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 SourceTree· · · | 19 | 4 | Windows; OSX | – | – |
| #2 SmartGit/Hg· · · | 14 | 1 | – | – | – |
| #3 GitKraken· · · | 14 | 2 | Windows, Mac, Linux | Free / $49 per yr / $39 per yr (teams) / $79 per yr (offline) | Support, Merge Conflict, Commercial Use, Offline License Server |
| #4 Tower 2· · · | 9 | 1 | Windows; OSX | – | – |
| #5 GitUp· · · | 3 | 0 | – | – | – |
| #6 GitX-dev· · · | 3 | 0 | – | – | – |
Pro Free
Free to use without registration. After 30 days, it requires registration (which is also free).
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 book...
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. The top s...
Con Limited repository support
Supports only bitbucket and github repositories.
Con Information density can be a bit much
It's possible to be overwhelmed with the information density presented in Sourcetree. Especially in history view since it includes a lot of data presented in various ways. It's great for getting a comprehensive overview of everything that's happening in one place, but it can take some...
Con Use native ssh
A lot of us set up git (commandline tool/the real git) separately and then adds a GUI client you want to work on to of this. This is where Sourcetree fails. It just won't work with ssh keys that works when you use git command line. Which means something going on and you have no control what...
Pro Support Git, Mercurial and SVN
SmartGit/Hg supports Git and Mercurial as well as SVN via git bridge.
Pro Git-flow support
Git-flow provides a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. SmartGit/Hg allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure.
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 Available for free
Can be installed and used for free.
Pro Consistent across platforms; built using Electron
Since this built using Electron the user interface is exactly the same on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Con UI uses up a lot of space
The part of the UI element that lists tags takes up 10% to 25%. On larger screens this is not an issue but on larger screen or super high res screen set to 2x, this can become a clunky usability issue.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure.
Pro Pretty, modern-looking user interface
Tower 2 has a good-looking interface which 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...
Pro Offers a visual way to solve conflicts
Tower 2 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 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.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure.
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.
Pro Fast GUI
Responsive even with thousands of files or large binary like files
Pro A lot of operations can be done visually
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.
Con Clumsy staging workflow
The staging workflow in GitX-dev is kind of clumsy and unintuitive.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Great integration with GitHub services
This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team.
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.
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.
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