I was looking at video reviews of git GUI clients. The best ones are pricey and we are two people occasionally editing some webpages for our business website. It’s hosted on GitLab Pages.

Can anyone recommend something straightforward? I’ll be sticking to the terminal but my colleague is new to code repositories.

Git GUI is free, but looks terrible IMO. Sublime have a nice one and it’s not subscription based, but is expensive. We are both on Mac usually.

Another alternative I considered was showing them the three terminal commands I use mainly (add, commit and push) and then let them edit from the file manager itself. But because they’ll be doing this so rarely, it might be easy to forget.

Edit: I’ve settled on a few to try out: sourcetree, fork, gitup and the one by Sublime. The conversation doesn’t have to end there, but thanks for the help. So many great answers here :)

6 points
*

Sourcetree is pretty good. GitHub Desktop is cross-platform and pretty good. Visual Studio Code has a GUI for git management and it’s pretty good too. The last two are free, but idk about Sourcetree.

permalink
report
reply
2 points

Thanks. Just checked the Atlassian site and Sourcetree is a free download. I don’t see any mention of pricing either so it doesn’t seem to be a limited trial from what I can tell. Great!

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Glad I could help!

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

+1 for Sourcetree

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

for GUI I’m a fan of VS Code with the Git Graph extension. a not so much GUI solution would be setting up Starship. it gives the user visual feedback on what branch and if there changes to the repo along with a bunch of other fun stuff. since you’re on MacOS it’s super easy to install with Homebrew

permalink
report
reply
1 point

Git Graph looks very suitable for my partner. Star Ship is something I might use myself. I appreciate these, thanks!

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

I use Sourcetree on Mac for work, though I use the terminal most of the time.

permalink
report
reply
2 points

This was reviewed in the video I linked in another comment. Looking at their website though, at that link you share, it looks really suitable for beginners. Thank you, I appreciate the link.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points
*

I know OP is on Mac, but for anyone needing a git GUI on Windows, TortoiseGit is probably the best you’ll find. Integrates right into File Explorer, turns nearly every command into a form, every flag and parameter into a field, and it even shows you the command you end up running. Very powerful, and doesn’t do anything non-standard (looking at you Github). It’s actually taught me more about git than just reading the manual ever did.

permalink
report
reply
4 points

Not gui, but tui, lazygit is my favourite. It’s got all the features you could need, help with ?, and doesn’t limit stashes like github desktop for litterally no reason. If that doesn’t work for you have you tried github desktop?

permalink
report
reply
2 points
*

lazygit is by far the best git ui imo. you have to give a shit to learn how to use it correctly (same goes for any tool), but the developer has made fantastic demo videos explaining the features. He has clearly used git professionally for a long time, and built something to solve the exact real-world git problems.

I guess I wouldn’t give lazygit to someone with no git experience… I would set up some branch protection rules asap so they can’t use a ui to force reset a main branch or something.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I was impressed with that video (linked in another comment I think).

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

LazyGit is something that I’ll definitely test out for my own use, thank you so much!. I’ll see what they think of it too.

I’ve looked at a video comparison which included GitHub Desktop and it seemed unintuitive to me. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4cX4HeN6lH8

But it was compared against top-tier clients like Git Kraken so maybe it’s better than the impression I was left with. Actually, I think I’ll test it out too and show it to them along with LazyGit and Fork. Thanks again.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Programming

!programming@kbin.social

Create post

This magazine is dedicated to discussions on programming languages, software development, and coding. Whether you are a beginner programmer or an experienced developer, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as coding languages, software engineering, web development, and more. From the latest trends and frameworks to tips and tricks for debugging, this category covers a wide range of topics related to programming.

Community stats

  • 1

    Monthly active users

  • 200

    Posts

  • 381

    Comments

Community moderators