When comparing Meld vs GitKraken Client, the Slant community recommends Meld for most people. In the question“What are the best visual merge tools for Git?” Meld is ranked 1st while GitKraken Client is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Meld is:
In addition to comparing two files it also allows you to edit them right in place. What's more, the diffs are updated automatically.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports editing files directly
In addition to comparing two files it also allows you to edit them right in place. What's more, the diffs are updated automatically.
Pro Free and open source
Meld is freely available on Linux, Windows and OSX (through MacPorts, Fink or Brew).
It's also open source and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Pro Comparing two or more different folders is supported
Meld allows users to compare two or three different folders for differences. But if a user wants to 'zoom in' and compare files contained in these folders, Meld gives you the ability to do so and launch file comparisons between files contained in different folders or in the same folder.
Pro Supports some simple version control actions
Meld supports the major version control systems (Git, Mercurial, Subversion and Bazaar). You can launch file comparisons between different versions to see what parts changed before commiting.
Simple version control actions are also supported and possible. For example: commit/update/add/remove/delete files.
Pro Three way comparisons
You can compare up to three different files for differences. Plus you can edit files from the comparison view and the diff will automatically update.
Pro Simple GUI
Pro Easy to use and visually appealing
Stragihtforward and you don't need to read tutorials to use it. Just click and select and you instantly see how the difference and merges are connected to eachother.
3 sub- windows, instead of 4, which reduces the mess during merge and let you see more of the surrounding files rather than just 5 lines.
Pro Fast on Linux
Relatively fast on Linux.
Pro Internationalization
Through the GNOME Translation project and the translators that have worked for it, Meld is available in multiple languages. You can check if your language is supported in the translation statistics page.
If you can't find your language or if your language translation is unfinished and you want to help, you can do so by joining the GNOME Translation Project.
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 right-click on something.
It gives more space to the commits, i.e. the most important things. In fact, you can collapse or reduce the other menus/windows.
It displays the current path (project, branch) on an horizontal (clickable) bar at the top. It's just a matter of taste but I prefer this to the traditional "tree" view.
It has undo and redo buttons on the main window.
It supports some drag-and-drop gestures (for example: drag-and-droping the local branch to the remote one pushes it).
Pro Extremely easy to use
A lot of care has gone into trying to make GitKraken as easy and intuitive as possible and it show. Every action is quick and painless with no more user interaction than necessary. For example, switching to another branch is as easy as a double-click on the sidebar.
Pro Cross-platform
Built on top of Electron, so it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
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.
Pro Some of the best integration with hosted version control services
GitKraken can be connected to Github, Gitlab, or Bitbucket accounts through OAuth. From that point onward most if not all actions that are related to these services can be done inside GitKraken. Things like: cloning or forking a repository, adding a remote, pushing to a remote repository hosted on these services can be done inside the app.
You can even manage pull requests inside GitKraken for example. All pull requests for a certain branch for example are shown on that branch's graph.
Pro Free version available
There are both pro and free versions available. The free version is pretty complete feature-wise for day-to-day operations.
Pro Under constant improvement
A quick glance at GitKraken's release notes shows how frequently it's updated. Updates are released on a 2-4 week cycle and each one brings new features and bug fixes.
Pro GitFlow support out of the box
Supports GitFlow out of the box.
Pro Has a FuzzyFinder
GitKraken has a fuzzy finder to switch between repos/files.
Pro Perfect for beginner developers
GitKraken is easy to use and is brilliant for the beginner developers.
Pro Has a dark theme
No more eyestrain staring at white screens - GitKraken has a lovely dark theme.
Pro Good keyboard shortcuts
Cons
Con Slow on large files
While larger files are supported, they can take a long time to load. (20,000 lines+)
Con Program opens slow on Windows
Update: This issue should be fixed on Meld-3.18.1-win32.msi released on 27 May 2018. See http://meldmerge.org/news.html
Con Very slow mac OS port
Con No option to compare individual rows horizontally
Unlike other options, like Beyond Compare, Meld has no option to compare individual rows horizontally.
Con Not having a base value to reference can make merging less certain
Con No Explorer context menu integration
In Windows, there is no option to right-click and compare files easily.
Con No official OSX Support
Some attempts have been made to port, but nothing easy or fully working.
Con Missing contextual command line options
Not all contextual elements are exposed to the cli. Specifically the ability to follow our not follow symlinks, but also things like file system metadata parsing. These options and others can only be toggled via the gui's settings window.
Con No longer free for use with private repos
You can use GitKraken for free if you're working on a public hosted repo, but you can no longer work on a private hosted one without paying.
Con Slow
Can take between 2 and 5 seconds to load a repository, if not crashing while loading
Con Must log into GitKraken servers to use the free version
All functionality is disabled unless you register for a free account and remain logged in.
There is the $99/user/yr Enterprise option. It allows you to deploy a Linux License Server in an air-gapped/offline environment.
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 nowadays), it can have some issues when opening large repositories and there have been cases where GitKraken failed to open very large repositories or started lagging once they were opened.
Con Not open source
It is gratis (no cost) but is not open source. The community cannot fix problems in it, audit it for security, or trust it in general.
Con Not free for commercial use
The free version of GitKraken cannot be used in commercial projects.
Con Crashes once in a while
Under specific circumstances, like resetting 5000+ changes, the GUI will crash.
Con Has annoying popup reminders that ask you to upgrade to the Pro version
Understandable, since nobody is entitled to use work done by others for free, but annoying nonetheless.
Con Amending merge output is a pro feature
In most cases of Merge Conflicts, users are stuck with auto-merge or manually resolving it by hand. This is because in the Free Tier, users can only (1) Keep File (ver 1), (2) Keep File (ver 2), (3) Auto-merge, or (4) Use External Merge Tool.
In addition, using External Merge Tools is very limited because GitKraken (all tiers) restricts External Merge Tools to only those it managed to Auto-detect. It also does not support custom arguments for the External Tools.
Modifying the merge output directly, or Selecting lines to keep/discard, is a Paid Feature.
Con Can be confusing
Con No real commitement to Linux support
Infinite loop on Fedora 28, no debug feature or stacktrace available, no clear dependencies listing.... No real support on Linux.