
SourceTree for Windows 2.0 - tuananh
https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2017/04/27/sourcetree-for-windows-2-0-new-ui-faster-performance-and-microsoft-git-virtual-file-system-support/
======
ArchReaper
The last several times I tried to update Sourcetree, it got significantly
worse, with features and functionality being silently removed or broken left
and right. Every UI 'improvement' they made felt backwards to me. Simple
quality of life things like being able to drag files between the
staged/unstaged area just stopped working.

Then, trying to guess/figure out the correct previous version you were running
that had all the functionality you needed is a nightmare.

I tried to give this a shot.

1\. Run the installer.

2\. Prompt informed me that I should uninstall the previous version of
Sourcetree. No other information on the prompt. Close the prompt.

3\. Nothing happens. I expect that the new version can't install next to an
old version. No problem, let me go uninstall the old version...

4\. After about 15 seconds of going through the control panel, uninstall
programs, look for sourcetree, etc...

5\. Sourcetree pops up. No notification that anything was installing. No
customization of install options. No warning of any kind that this was
actually being installed on your system.

6\. Oh, look at that. They removed UI components that I consider critical,
with no option of 'toggling' those components - just a complete removal (ex:
the sidebar that listed all the projects. I have a lot of projects, scrolling
through tabs at the top is not good enough)

I really wish the Windows side of Sourcetree would get it's shit together.
I'll be going back to my older version.

Sorry for being such a negative nancy. If anyone has a recommendation for
another Git GUI client for Windows, please let me know.

~~~
Chyzwar
This looks promising: [https://www.gitkraken.com/](https://www.gitkraken.com/)

~~~
nailer
Alas they've been promising rebase support for a couple of years now. Would
love to try it when they do.

~~~
johnhaley81
We have rebase support :)

~~~
nailer
Interactive rebase support.

------
nmeofthestate
Have they got rid of the treeview of repos? That was a vital feature. I never
used the tabs because they didn't all fit on screen, and the tab UI doesn't
allow you to distinguish between different repos with the same name.
Ironically they seem to have adopted what I considered the worst feature of
Git Kraken. Oh, and it let you see all your repos' status (what branches are
checked out) at a glance. This is such a pain. I will definitely need to roll
back to the last version.

Totally agree with other commenters - this application suffers from the most
"changes that randomly f __* up the UI " of any app that I use (because it's
still useful despite the havoc the developers inflict on the app)

~~~
RandoSTDev
ST dev for Windows here. How many repo do you typically work with at once?
Would it help to show the "ahead/behind" indications in the tab headers?

~~~
socialist_coder
Dude, you gotta fix the little arrows that let you scroll the tab bar. Each
click just scrolls it like 10% of a tab so it takes 10 clicks to move it 1
tab. This is ridiculous.

Personally, I have a 2560x1440 monitor and I keep ST on it fullscreen. I
usually have ~7 repos open but sometimes need to open up to 15. I can fit 11
tabs but look at how much wasted space is in each tab:
[https://www.screencast.com/t/vKrSNe5APy](https://www.screencast.com/t/vKrSNe5APy)

On the older version of ST, like 1.5 or something, the tabs were only as big
as the name of the repo so each tab was much smaller. This worked great.

Alternatively, make the tabs just add extra rows so instead of having a
scrolling list, the tab bar grows vertically instead.

------
xtf
When it will be available for Windows 3.11? SCNR

~~~
agumonkey
God I thought it was the source tree of MS Windows 2.x. So disappointed.
#grammar

~~~
djsumdog
I could tell what they were saying, but my inner grammar Nazi kicked in as
well.

~~~
agumonkey
I wasn't into grammar nazi mode, more nostalgia nazi mode.

------
contingencies
Used to pay for this before it was acquired by Atlassian. Never used it since.
Thought I might try, given the major new version number, but...

 _You will be prompted for your Atlassian account details. You only have to
login once to complete your registration._

No thanks.

Be warned, paying users upgrading from 2.x to current 2.3.x will be forced to
sign up.

~~~
tajen
And in Atlassian's license, section 12: "You will not publicly disseminate
information regarding the performance of the Products.". Enables trust a
lot...

[https://www.atlassian.com/legal/customer-
agreement](https://www.atlassian.com/legal/customer-agreement)

~~~
jschumacher
Let me follow up with our legal team to see why that's in there. Sometimes
there is a good "legal" reason for these terms that are not quite obvious to
the rest of us.

To the earlier comment, we have gotten a lot of feedback in regards to the
sign-up to Atlassian Account. The fact is that you always required a license,
so you had to sign-up anyway. But we took the license away and streamlined the
sign-up into the product (yes, there are issues with people behind firewalls
that we will have to address).

Personally, I don't think requiring an account is asking too much for a free
product and down the road it will help us to provide a more seamless
integration for people who use other Atlassian tools as well.

Cheers, Jens

~~~
contingencies
I had a license, changed nothing, and your upgrade wants me to go waste 10
minutes to-and-froing to get on some new marketing database. Sorry, not cool.
I feel like your company ruined a great product I was very happy with.

------
Sujan
Here is a UI/UX comparison of 1.x vs. 2.x:
[https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2017/01/27/sourcetree-for-
win...](https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2017/01/27/sourcetree-for-
windows-2-0-is-now-in-beta/)

------
acemarke
Was really disappointed in the UI direction they took in 1.8+, but fortunately
they seem to have backtracked a bit (icons now actually have labels and a bit
of color again, etc). Giving this a shot and we'll see how I feel in a few
days.

~~~
nailer
Hrm, I'm the opposite - I like icons to have clear, simple shapes. But I like
this too.

~~~
acemarke
The problem was they removed _all_ color from all icons in 1.8, made them all
gray with pencil-thin lines, and removed all the labels. The icons in 1.6 were
perfectly fine - in 1.8, you couldn't tell anything apart. There was a huge
thread in the Sourcetree JIRA complaining about this:
[https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-4306](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-4306)
.

------
socialist_coder
This seems like a great update to me. Much speedier than 1.x and the removal
of the repo sidebar doesn't seem like it actually matters. It's 1 additional
click to access your repo list but it seems like a good tradeoff for a bit
more horizontal space.

Another positive change is the tab bar now occupies the entire horizontal
space so you can fit a few more repos in. But, the tabs are still super wide
(much wider than they need to be). This was changed sometime around 1.7 and I
hate it. If you have repos with a lot of submodules you tend to have a lot of
repos open so it really hurts this use case.

So yeah, please make the tabs less wide so we can have more open!

~~~
socialist_coder
It's so much faster. I'm very pleased with the speed improvements. Every time
I click on something it's almost instant. Before, not so much. Great job
Atlassian!

------
socialist_coder
I like this new version a lot (it's so much faster!) but after having used it
all morning, I'm noticing something that I really do not like.

If I click on a changed file to see the diff, the diff text shows up almost
immediately, but it's blurry. Then, gradually the blurry text is replaced by
sharp text about .5 seconds later. It's really nasty to see it and I feel like
it's messing with my eyes and brain.

Is there any way to tweak this behavior? I feel like I would rather just see
nothing until it can render it sharply.

------
Sujan
I don't understand why they don't show the Windows UI on
[https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/](https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/) if they
already know I'm using Windows by showing me the "Download for Windows"
button.

------
hs86
How good is this compared to the relatively new Tower Git client for Windows?
SourceTree for Windows should be a little more mature but the recent versions
felt like a step backwards.

~~~
slantyyz
I briefly tried Tower for Windows a month or so as an alternative for
SourceTree. The UI is nicer, but I found that it kept crashing on me.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It's been stable for me but I think it's probably too minimal, I will probably
go back to SmartGit.

------
sha666sum
My biggest gripe with SourceTree (and Atlassian products in general) is the
poor use of screen space. Too bad this new visual look seems to do nothing to
fix it.

~~~
joelunger
What specifically do you think is a poor use of screen space?

------
ungzd
Used it long time ago, but later versions became extremelly slow and bloated,
just like everything from Atlassian. Now I'm using Magit which is fantastic.

~~~
nailer
Edit: all the annoyances below are fixed on SourceTree 2.

I have double sized-icons that overlap the text, and SourceTree 2 couldn't
uninstall SourceTree 1, but this seems like a welcome return to form so far.
The UI seems a little faster too.

\--------

Yep. I use SourceTree daily [1]. Current state of SourceTree 1.x on Windows:

\- Highlighting files to see the diffs frequently breaks - you have the file
highlighted but nothing shown in the diff view. You have to go to history and
then back to see code changed in a file

\- Dragging changes to staging area is broken

\- Selecting upwards in a diff makes a non contiguous selection that can't be
staged

[1] Alas none of the other git clients have a UI for interactive rebase, and I
hate doing that on CLI.

------
sandGorgon
the nicest, and comprehensively cross-platform client I have seen is Smartgit
([http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/](http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/)). Its
linux client works brilliantly!

Interestingly, it comes with integrations with bitbucket, github, etc to
resolve pull requests and review comments.

~~~
yAnonymous
GitKraken

~~~
sureste
Notes: non-free for commercial use and, most importantly, an Electron app.

I don't care about any of those currently, though.

------
nunez
What value does SourceTree provide when one can use 'git' in a
terminal/command prompt?

~~~
yAnonymous
What value does a car provide when you can use a bike? I'm using the CLI
myself, but pretending that graphical software doesn't have any use is
pretentious.

------
gushie
I'll have to give it a try, it can't be any worse than the previous versions,
can it?

------
Sujan
By the way, did you get the 2.0 update in the old 1.9 version? I didn't :/

~~~
mulletboy
_Using SourceTree 1.9 or earlier? We implemented a change in the way we roll
out updates (announced here) late last year, so if you’re using SourceTree for
Windows 1.9 or earlier you will not see auto updates for 2.0. Please download
2.0 directly from our website instead._

~~~
Sujan
Damn, I read this "earlier than 1.9". Sorry.

