When comparing gitk vs GitUI, the Slant community recommends GitUI for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for Windows?” GitUI is ranked 25th while gitk is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose GitUI is:
No need to memorize a ton of keys or crawl man pages, gitui only Shows you the valid keys depending on your current context.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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
Pro Context based help
No need to memorize a ton of keys or crawl man pages, gitui only Shows you the valid keys depending on your current context.
Pro Intuitive key shortcuts
Perfect for developers who hate to leave their keyboard.
Pro Very fast even in massive repos
Most alternatives crash or run out of memory when opening 1M+ commits repos line Linux.
Pro Free and open source
Pro Crossplatform
Supports macOS, Linux, and Windows.
Cons
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.
Con Terminal is not for everyone
It fills a niche between full-blown GUI apps and the bare git CLI.
Con Lacks some features
It’s still in active development and catches up quickly.