Kdiff3 vs GitKraken Client

For modern version control systems, 3way merge support is a basic requirement, but many other open source diff viewers do not adequately handle 3way merges.

KDiff3 is completely free to download and use. It's also open source released under the GPL.

It is able to compare whole directory trees.

In addition to comparing two files it also allows you to edit the merge result right in place.

On comparing two files, difference is shown by characters; not by lines.

Allow customizing colors regardless of user/system theme.

With selecting code in one window and hitting Ctrl+Y, then selecting some other code in second window and also hitting Ctrl+Y you can manually align the code.

There are options that may pre-process compared files before Kdiff3 actually do a comparison - to ignore for example automatically generated dates and/or revision numbers added by commit hooks.

You can right-click a folder/file and the options:

• Save <file> for later
• Compare with

will be available, making launching KDiff3 really convenient.

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).

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.

Built on top of Electron, so it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

GitKraken has simple undo/redo buttons that work the same way you'd expect in any other software.

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.

There are both pro and free versions available. The free version is pretty complete feature-wise for day-to-day operations.

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.

Supports GitFlow out of the box.

GitKraken has a fuzzy finder to switch between repos/files.

GitKraken is easy to use and is brilliant for the beginner developers.

No more eyestrain staring at white screens - GitKraken has a lovely dark theme.