
GitKraken: git GUI Client for Windows Mac and Linux - bpierre
http://www.gitkraken.com/
======
alpb
The applicatino asks you to register with my email address for further
"communications related to GitKraken or Axosoft". There is no way to skip this
step, you have to provide an email address ––and pay attention to "OR"... No
thanks, buddy.

First thing I tried is dropping a git repo folder to the window, didn't work.
When I click the open button I can see the Javascript animation glitching on
my 'Early 2015 i5 2.7 Ghz MacBook Pro'.

The commit list UI is kind of alright but it doesn't show you the diff
anywhere. So that's not exactly a Git UI, buddy. And this is not open source
either, that's a lot of strikes. No thanks.

~~~
andrei_says_
If you're on OS X I recommend gitup. Very fast and clean. Although if I
remember correctly, it does ask for an email address.

~~~
slashdotdash
GitHub Desktop[1] runs on both OS X and Windows. It works with non-GitHub git
repositories too.

[1] [https://desktop.github.com/](https://desktop.github.com/)

~~~
mbrock
I wish the GitHub Desktop app would be more of a browser for GitHub.com,
including issues.

GitHub's site is not really convenient for me, the notifications aren't very
useful, it generally feels like a clunky way to work.

If GitHub were smarter, they could have become the Slack of development.
There's so much room for improvement there.

------
0942v8653
Not open source: [http://www.gitkraken.com/faq](http://www.gitkraken.com/faq)

~~~
lallysingh
Yeah. I don't know when this happened, but that's become a deal breaker for
me. Strange, right?

Edit to add: It's particularly strange because I wouldn't depend on this tool
in some infrastructural way -- I could switch clients anytime without any lock
in. But I'm no longer willing to even try anymore. Odd.

~~~
bengotow
I don't think this is a dealbreaker for 99% of people. I currently use Tower
([https://www.git-tower.com/](https://www.git-tower.com/)), a closed-source
Mac Git client that costs $70.

It's beautiful, it speeds up my work day to day, and it's been worth every
cent. Open source is great and I spend my days building an open-source mail
client, but I have no problem paying for great tools.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
I hate to be that guy, but you're paying $70 for that? What does that offer
over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's _free_ offering. From a quick glance, they
look pretty similar to me.

~~~
aidenn0
Am I the only one who remembers when $70 was cheap for anything development
related? Either it's good enough to save you 5-10 minutes a day where it's
obviously worth $70 or it's not, and isn't worth any price (well maybe a
dollar or two if you are, say, a collector of git clients).

~~~
pjmlp
Somehow new generations of developers want all their tools for free, but
expect to get money for their work.

Strange profession, when compared how much some of other professionals pay for
their tools.

~~~
hobarrera
Why is it strange? Lots developers who write free software get paid for their
work.

~~~
pjmlp
Only in areas where software is not the main product.

~~~
hobarrera
How did you come up with that?

Mozilla is a clear example of people paid to write FLOSS. I used to work at a
foundation that did that too. There's plenty going around.

~~~
pjmlp
Mozilla is a clear example of a software that isn't the product being sold.

The product being sold is the service to access online web sites, sell search
data to engines and online advertising.

------
mostafaberg
I personally never use GUI clients for git, the CLI does exactly what it's
supposed to do, efficiently, quickly in a stable reproducible manner, most GUI
clients are for people who just don't want to learn to use the CLI properly.

But some tips for your project: 1-Lose the forced email registration 2-Easy on
the Luxury, we're devs not divas 3-The beta agreement is just way too scary to
take the product seriously, examples:

>Company grants Recipient a nonexclusive, nontransferable license to use the
GitKraken (“Product”) for a period designated by the Company for the purpose
of testing and evaluating the Product.

>This Product is a beta release offering and is not at the level of
performance of a commercially available product offering. The Product may not
operate correctly and may be substantially modified prior to first commercial
release, or at Company’s option may not be released commercially in the
future.

How do you expect to compete with other existing and stable products ? I'm not
trying to sound harsh, this is just my views and I think I've got a point
right?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
"most GUI clients are for people who just don't want to learn to use the CLI
properly"

Ridiculously arrogant comment with nothing to back it up. GUIs exist; get over
it.

"How do you expect to compete with other existing and stable products?"

It's a beta. The T's & C's pretty much translate as "it's a beta". What do you
want them to do, NOT release a beta? Fair enough if so, but a lot of software
is released this way. And pretty much all FLOSS software excuses itself from
any kind of warranty too.

~~~
dvirsky
I use both with git, nothing wrong with that. A GUI client for committing
which allows me to better look at diffs and makes selecting files for staging
easier, not having to do `git status` all the time; and the command line for
everything else - pulls, merges, rebases, cherry picking etc etc.

~~~
seanp2k2
You might also like: [https://github.com/magicmonty/bash-git-
prompt](https://github.com/magicmonty/bash-git-prompt)

Basically shows you 'git status' at a glance, all the time. More for bash
people: [https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it](https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-
it) (similar to ooh my zsh)

[https://github.com/alebcay/awesome-shell#for-
developers](https://github.com/alebcay/awesome-shell#for-developers)

PyCharm / any IntelliJ-based IDE, Atom, vim, emacs etc can also all nicely
show git status of your current project. I'd suggest one of those as well in
whatever flavor of editor you prefer.

~~~
dvirsky
I'm using mostly IntelliJ / PyCharm and Atom which indeed show me that status.
I usually commit either with IntelliJ directly (though sometimes it's too
inclusive which is annoying), or with gitg.

------
millstone
This is an Electron app, meaning it does not look, feel, or perform like a
native Mac app. FYI in case that's important to you.

~~~
ex3ndr
To be honest, html-based scroll lists are usually much faster than native one.
Reason: Very obsolete UI framework for Mac.

~~~
millstone
This is totally backwards. HTML has no good elements for long lists at all,
leading to janky techniques like "infinite scroll." But NSTableView was
designed from the start with very long lists in mind.

Try opening a large repo and scrolling a list of commits in GitKraken. You'll
see large blank areas that get filled in after a few seconds. Now try it in,
say, GitUp, which uses NSTableView: it is perfectly smooth.

~~~
ex3ndr
I don't see any complex NSTableView in GitUp, they definitely use something
other. When i worked at Telegram, we worked hard to make default lists smooth
and it is almost impossible. Eventually main client became Qt-based instead of
native frameworks. All other Git tools also very slow on my MPB Retina. All of
them are laggy in lists and only lists.

Having nothing good for long lists doesn't matter as rendering pipline on OSX
didn't updated for a years. Almost everything in UI on OSX is still software
rendered instead of GPU. And Chrome extensively use GPU for rendering and that
outperforms everything.

------
chedabob
I keep seeing this promoted on Twitter, but there's nothing on the site that
gives any idea of what it does better than SourceTree/Tower or any of the
dozens of other Git GUIs.

~~~
subie
But did you see they have a cool background? If someone has that cool of a
background you can trust the software is A+.

~~~
r3bl
And a... well, I'm not sure how to describe this promo video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE1ImXs2LnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE1ImXs2LnI)

~~~
Cyph0n
Sigh.. again with the "I have no idea what to put in this promo, so let's make
it a parody video instead".

------
readme
Love the interface, dark theme and super intuitive. Could use syntax
highlighting in diffs, though. It will need that feature to convince me to pay
money, later.

One weird thing: it'd be great to have the option to show a name, instead of a
shrunken avatar in the commit log, perhaps configure how this is shown, so I
can choose the format of the name and if I want to see an avatar or not... I
may be the only one, but seeing a 100+ row long column of just my face (I have
worked on a few projects solo) kind of creeps me out.

Any idea when the product is going to be ready and how much it will cost?

~~~
efraim
Not sure when they plan on releasing 1.0 but it's going to be free

[https://twitter.com/GitKraken/status/692866148199591936](https://twitter.com/GitKraken/status/692866148199591936)

------
duaneb
Here are the things every git client should have before opening up:

1) side by side comparison—seems like it only has vertical, which means for
heavy changes it's basically useless.

2) conflict resolution.

3) search (it seems like gitkraken does this well from the screenshots)

4) Interactive rebasing, the bread and butter of clean git usage.

Without the above _as a minimum_ , I might as well just use the git cli all
the time. It's not worth using two git tools when the cli is already so
powerful.

~~~
nine_k
1 and 2 can be handled by meld[1], available both on Linux and on OSX (via
brew).

It integrates with git with just `git mergetool -t meld`.

    
    
      1: http://meldmerge.org/

~~~
js2
In particular, you really want a 3-way merge tool (which compares yours and
theirs to the common ancestor) for resolving conflicts. Meld didn't used to
have this, but it looks like it does now. FWIW, on OS X you can also configure
git to use opendiff (which opens FileMerge). It does the job pretty well.

Source: my day job used to involve daily merging of Chromium with Rockmelt and
I probably evaluated every merge tool that existed at the time.

Tip: git config --global merge.conflictstyle=diff3

~~~
grincho
A little off-topic: since 10.10 or so, FileMerge has started opening the
bottom, free-editing pane by default—and at a random height, at that. Has
anyone figured out how to disable that? It's driving me into the arms of a
different, otherwise inferior diff tool.

------
Vlaix
Serious question, never used a git GUI in my life, is there a practical point
to it ? I just can't see myself doing it without zsh, my nested .dotfiles,
fasd and so on. And worst case scenario, I can always _git_ them back.

~~~
swisspol
Believe or not, there are a number of cases where you can work faster in a GUI
than the CLI: many operations on the topology of the repo for instance. See
somes examples at [http://gitup.co/](http://gitup.co/).

Disclaimer: I made GitUp for that very reason ;)

~~~
chei0aiV
Looks awesome, any chance of a port to Linux? Perhaps via GNUStep?

------
adamwong246
Does it have per-hunk and per-line staging/unstaging like sourcetree? That's
an absolute must for me.

~~~
karlshea
It does not, which is also a dealbreaker for me.

------
wwkeyboard
The lack of screenshots above the fold fails my sniff test. If it's so great
show me, if not I wondering what's hiding.

The same thing applies for languages and frameworks, if the code is great show
it off.

~~~
ksherlock
There are screenshots --
[http://www.gitkraken.com/screenshots](http://www.gitkraken.com/screenshots)

~~~
wwkeyboard
You missed the point of the post.

edit: When you load the page there is nothing to convince someone to dig
further. All it says is "trust us it's better".

~~~
npizzolato
So you're basically just arguing that their webpage doesn't have a good
layout. If you want to dismiss the product because of that, that's your
choice, but I wish people would keep complaints about website design to
themselves. They're so _boring_. I come to HN to read insightful commentary
about articles and projects, and complaints about the websites themselves just
make me roll my eyes.

~~~
sdesol
To be honest, this is actually a good strategy ... producing a poor layout
that is. I've found a lot of times, a post either has a lot of comments/votes
because the product idea was stupid and/or something unrelated about the
product was less than impressive.

So if you are launching a product on Hacker News, it might be worthwhile to
create two separate landing pages. Create one that is less than
informative/provocative to get the votes/comments and then switch to a more
informative one when you have secured a front page position.

------
boomlinde
Title seems a bit misleading. From the FAQ:

 _Does GitKraken support GitHub Enterprise /Bitbucket Server?_

 _GitKraken currently does not support these services but support is planned
for a future release._

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that GitKraken supports one or
more specific git based services that aren't GitHub Enterprise or Bitbucket,
both of which use git.

I'm assuming that the service it _does_ support is GitHub, but maybe the title
and website should reflect that limitation.

~~~
0942v8653
Not sure how the title is misleading. It supports any git remote, but it has a
few extra features (GH-style pull requests for example) that aren't really a
part of Git. Those features are only possible on a GitHub or Bitbucket server,
not just any git remote, but it currently only supports using them on the main
public GitHub/Bitbucket servers.

~~~
boomlinde
If not the title, the FAQ is misleading. If it supports any git remote it
supports Bitbucket and GitHub enterprise.

------
smithkl42
I've played around with it for a bit, and will probably continue to do so -
but my initial take on it is that it isn't very intuitive, especially compared
to SourceTree. SourceTree has had some struggles lately with performance and
bugs in their new 1.8.x version, but those aside, it does everything I need it
to, and it was very intuitive to pick up. In contrast, the UI for GitKraken is
just...odd.

------
51Cards
8.67 Meg videos as wallpaper is a little excessive?

------
lawnchair_larry
PSA: Writing desktop apps in node.js and bundling a portable instance of
Chromium to view them is not a sane thing to do.

~~~
abiox
i take it you're not a fan of electron.

~~~
kuschku
There are people who don't like using 200MB of RAM for a git client, plus
200MB per browser tab, plus the few gigabytes for their IDE, etc...

Because very quickly you reach a point where 10GB RAM are not enough — I know,
I've had that very issue.

Replaced every electron app with a native or Java alternative, now I can
actually work without swapping.

------
rbosinger
Lots of negativity here. I use SourceTree normally and although I'm a command-
line comfortable vim/tmux/fugitive/etc kind-of-guy I've decided I like GUIs
for GIT. GitKraken is worth watching IMO. So far I've liked using it (I
started trying it at 0.5 and just came back to it now with this 0.8
announcement).

I don't care that it's an Electron app. It seems snappy enough for me. Isn't
Slack on Electron? I have that running all day too.

This whole "it's not open-source anymore" thing kind of sucks though. If this
is just gearing up to be a paid application then it's really got to step up to
SourceTree. I initially figured it was just the rowdy javascript crowd flexing
their muscles and playing with things like Electron and that it would remain
open-sourced.

~~~
jrs235
It was and is developed by Axosoft, a competitor of Atlassian (JIRA).
Atlassian has SourceTree, Axosoft now has GitKraken. I'm assuming they'll keep
GitKraken free for a long time in an effort to be able to market Axosoft.

------
bsimpson
If you had to put this line in your FAQ:

> I hate blind dates. Can I see some screenshots?

> You can see some screenshots of GitKraken’s UI here.

You may want to rethink the design of your homepage.

------
theaustinseven
Does GitKraken support git Large File Storage? If so, I could see this
becoming an excellent tool for non-programmers who have to use git(designers,
game artists, etc.) and don't really want to get involved with some of the
complexities that come with git.

~~~
gusmd
We actually have _programmers_ who don't want to get involved with git...

~~~
duaneb
> We actually have programmers who don't want to get involved with git...

What do they prefer? Zip files, or something with a slightly different
interface but equivalent complexity (e.g. mercurial) ?

~~~
theaustinseven
I know some people who prefer svn or mercurial over git.

~~~
duaneb
Sure, that's normal! I'm curious whether the OP was saying that programmers
didn't like git specifically vs version control in general.

------
boxerab
If you're on windows, GitExtensions is pretty awesome. (open source too). I
made a donation to the author because that client saved me from a team mutiny
after I introduced git on the command line.

~~~
V-2
I agree. I use it on a daily basis. It has a lot of shortcomings, but I still
find it more convenient to use than SourceTree. I'm not aware about any other
sensible GUI clients for Windows.

------
mrmondo
Nice, well done done on the UI, I have a few issues though.

1\. I shouldn't need to sign up with your service, this also makes me distrust
the product.

2\. There is no Gitlab login option.

3\. It looks to be written in Javascript and thus uses a lot of resources:
[http://imgur.com/a/uEH4U](http://imgur.com/a/uEH4U)

So it's not /really/ a desktop app, it looks like it's just a chrome wrapper
for some javascript?

~~~
vuldin
It seems weird to me that in this day and age people would be making negative
comments about an app with this one's functionality being written in
JavaScript/ecmascript. This app looks awesome and performs well on my
platform, not sure if I'll continue to use it over the CLI client but so far
I'm impressed.

------
moogly
I tried this today. Pretty okay. A bit light on features, but it has the most
important ones.

However, it kept on creating temporary files (copies of the files I staged),
and they showed up as stageable files. Very confusing.

There also needs to be an option to truncate file paths in the staging area
box. Middle truncation that responds to the box width, or an option to only
show the file names, because right now file names are just completely
unreadable.

Also, there are stage hunk buttons, but no discard hunk buttons.

Configurable diff font size too.

I'll be still using SourceTree for now (even though they had that catastrophic
broken release last week).

Performance is a lot better than SourceTree though, which can be a real dog
sometimes. It's definitely showing that Electron is a viable choice to make
desktop apps.

------
suneilp
I'd like to see it honor the settings defined in ~/.ssh/config . Currently you
can only choose one key in the settings which doesn't work so well if you have
both github and bitbucket repos to manage let alone repos from 2 github and 1
bitbucket accounts.

~~~
matt4077
You can configure different keys for generic/github/bitbucket. Only one each,
but I think the default github workflow is to have a single user account that
belongs to different organizations.

------
legohead
First thing I searched for on your screenshot page: "merge" and "conflict" \--
didn't see anything. Other than that, it looks pretty sweet.

------
contingencies
For those looking for an alternative, SourceTree is the best GUI git client
I've found. I used to pay for it, before it was acquired by Atlassian.

------
746F7475
This makes repos look cool, but I'm not quite sure what benefit this offers
over just using cli git in combination with gitk (for easy visualisation). I
like the icon/gravatar thing, but since most people don't use gravatar there
is just a lot of "space invaders" and no names unless I click on the commit.

------
anentropic
has anyone ever found the spaghetti tangle of branches diagram useful for
anything?

every git gui provides one but I've never managed to parse any useful info
from it. maybe you have to be supernaturally disciplined about your commit
history or something. or maybe they're just fun to build, yay data
visualisations etc

------
baldfat
Sorry, I am that guy.

Linux support means source, deb _and_ rpm!

RPM is the Redhat and SUSE which are major commercial players in Linux. My
library was Redhat only in the college I worked at (I actually got to make
that switch happen)and still is. Now I work with OpenSUSE at my company.

------
hobarrera
> Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Company grants
> Recipient a nonexclusive, nontransferable license to use the GitKraken
> (“Product”) for a period designated by the Company for the purpose of
> testing and evaluating the Product.

Uhm, WHAT? No thanks!

------
jlawton
Wait, this is the same axosoft that makes ontime? I use ontime every day, and
generally hate it. But I'm not sure if that's their fault, or my company's
fault in the setup process :)

~~~
dallbee
The UI is designed well enough, I just wish the application wasn't basically a
web-view.

~~~
nine_k
Or, rather, it could be outright a web page, capable of being integrated to
whatever repo web tool you're using.

------
amelius
I prefer a CLI. But thanks! Intro page looks great, by the way!

------
jamesgeck0
I can't use this. It gets stuck on step 4 of the tour; clicking "Next" doesn't
do anything, and everything but the name and email field is greyed out.

------
clumsysmurf
Nice, I like the dark theme - switching between IDEA's Darcula to Sourcetree's
white background is eye straining.

------
madhukarah
Please give support for Gitlab login.

------
c54
Can I hook this into a self-hosted github? Or does it only talk to github.com

~~~
skimmas
I'm not sure but they describe it as a git client, not a github client so I
guess you can hook it up to whatever you please.

~~~
skimmas
ups... on the faq "Does GitKraken support GitHub Enterprise/Bitbucket Server?

    
    
        GitKraken currently does not support these services but support is planned for a future release."

~~~
flurdy
I guess by support they mean creating PRs etc directly from the client. Which
from the screenshots seems to currently to be the public github.com and
bitbucket.org.

However I would very surprised if they did not support normal git remotes so
it is irrelevant if that is Github Enterprise, Bitbucket server(Stash), Gitlab
or whatever.

------
sriram_iyengar
not happy about the registration part !

