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Comment by wtbob | Hacker News Reader

Pretty neat. Another terminal/GUI interface is Magit, the emacs mode for git.

Stuff like this is nice because it does let one directly manipulate objects within a git repository easily with a few keystrokes, rather than having to type 'git exchange-frobnozz --quark-handler=positronium' constantly (or having a million aliases, each of which is useful right up until it needs to be modified slightly).

The disadvantage, of course, is that one really should still know how to use git competently at the command line for the 15% of tasks such wrappers aren't good at.

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I recently switched from vim to emacs (mostly cause I want to mess around with LISPs and emacs LISP support is good e.g. CIDER) and I've had my eye on Magit from the get go, haven't had the time to mess around with it yet but definitely looking forward to do that.

>The disadvantage, of course, is that one really should still know how to use git competently at the command line for the 15% of tasks such wrappers aren't good at.

I definitely agree with this. I always learn the core technology before learning any convenience layer/wrapper/abstraction e.g. {(git, Magit), (CSS, -Insert Grid Framework-)}.

IMHO, Magit is easy to pick up and well worth the modest time investment. I have found the new release to be pretty speedy and making the commit directly from within Emacs is very handy.

Magit takes almost zero time to learn if you're used to the git CLI (some things are a bit weird, but mostly the commands are obvious from the help). It's basically a super-powered version of the git aliases lots of people use, but I don't bother, because I have magit :-)

Magit is amazing. Start using it now.

`C-h m` is your friend

The `tig` blame mode is still vastly superior though. I find blame in magit (and magit-next) unusable, unfortunately.

I use the magit interface for most operations, but for blame I usually fall back to vc-annotate, as I find it easier to read (commits on the left rather than as headers, coloring, customizable).

I haven't used tig, but from the blame view screenshot [1], they may be similar.

[1] http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/screenshots/blame-view.html

I also use vc-annotate, but tig blame is still superior in terms of commit annotation (shorter, easier to customize, and commit-based coloring).

...and for the use-case where you're on a remote system with a slow connection it's feasible to run magit inside `emacs -nw`.

Use tramp from your local emacs

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

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