When comparing fugitive (via vim) vs gitk, the Slant community recommends fugitive (via vim) for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for macOS?” fugitive (via vim) is ranked 10th while gitk is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose fugitive (via vim) is:
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.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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 windowo
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
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
Cons
Con Poor documentation
The documentation is rather poor and not very helpful.
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.
