I’m wondering if you use any (graphical) clients to manage your Git, and if so, what client you use.

I myself have to use git professionally across all 3 major OS-es, and I currently use Sourcetree on Windows and macOS, and the Git tools built-in into IntelliJ on Linux.

Have given MaGit a try, but just couldn’t get all the shortcuts to stick in my mind.

Interested to hear your experiences!

  • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
    7·
    3 days ago

    Fork !!!

    It’s hands down the best git client.

    It’s free as in: sublime text or winzip where they ask you once a month if you want to pay for it but you can just select: I’m still trying it out, and it gets out of your way.

    • It’s got a well designed tree graph like in GitKraken except it doesn’t lag
    • It’s interactive rebasing is as smooth as JJ / LazyGit, so you can edit/rename/reorder your commits except you don’t have to have to remember CLI flags since it has its own UI
    • It’s lets you commit individual lines by selecting them instead of adding/removing whole hunks like Sourcetree except it isn’t filled with paper cuts where a feature breaks in an annoying way for 2 years and you have to do extra steps to keep using it how you want.

    And one killer feature that I haven’t seen any other git clients handle: allowing me to stage only one side of the diff. As in: if I change a line (so it shows up as one removed line and one new line in git), I can decide to add the new line change while still keeping the old line.

    So changing this:

    doThing(1);

    into this:

    doThing(2);

    Shows up in git as:

    - doThing(1);
+ doThing(2);

    But if I still want to keep doThing(1);, I don’t have to go back into my code to retype doThing(1);, or do any manual copy-pasting. I can just highlight and add only doThing(2); to the staging area and discard the change to doThing(1);.

    So now the code exists as:

    doThing(1);
doThing(2);

    Now with a one-liner example like this, we could always re-enter the code again. But for larger code changes? It’s far easier to just highlight the code in the diff and say: yes to this and no to the other stuff.

    And when you get used to it, it makes it really easy to split what would be large git commits into smaller related changes keeping your git history clean and easy to understand.

    • ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 days ago

      I love Fork, bought the license to support the developer.

      The only thing I don’t like is that there is no Linux version, asked the dev and he told me that the issue with Linux is that there are different distros with different GUI libraries so it would require multiple versions for Linux.

      A bit saddened it I completely understand.

      • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
        2·
        9 hours ago

        I paid for it too!

        It’s the first piece of shareware I actually went out of my way to pay for because it was so good that I’d be genuinely pissed off if it died. I’d probably end up switching to pijul or something else for my projects if it ever did.

        I’ve seen a bunch of people messing the windows version running in linux in the fork forums, so it may be coming in an unsupported capacity.

    • fox2263@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I’ll second Fork, it’s been my go to for years! Maybe I’ll pay for it one day

    • Guttural@jlai.luFrançais
      1·
      3 days ago

      In case you’re interested, git add <files> -p allows you to do this on the command line. I use it daily.

      • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
        1·
        9 hours ago

        Yeah, I use it when ssh’d into a server, but it’s just so awkward to use.

        Sometimes it just really doesn’t want to separate a hunk. Other times you want to stage all lines except one, and you have to do a million splits just to target the lines you want to keep.

        It’d be far easier if you could just select the lines you want to affect. It’s literally the first feature shown in lazygit’s readme. I think half the reason that people use lazygit is that partial commits are so awkward to perform in most other clients.

        Luckily Fork does it as well as lazygit

      • Cyno@programming.dev
        1·
        3 days ago

        I still don’t think it’s nearly as convenient as being able to just see the changes side by side and click the one you want (or both). You can even easily modify the final outcome in the 3rd preview panel, in case you need to do a quick fix after a conflict resolution.