Fork: Fast and Friendly Git Client for Mac | Hacker News Reader

Fork: Fast and Friendly Git Client for Mac

git-fork.com

142 pointsadamnemecek103 comments

I can't even test the functionality because it won't let me pass the first screen because I don't have config user.email set in my gitconfig.

http://imgur.com/a/T4s4o

I have a pre-commit hook that is installed on all new repo's I create/clone that warns me, and then I set an email address PER REPO. This way I can work on both $WORK and open source projects on the same machine while having different email addresses per repository.

The assumption that a user needs to have user.email set globally breaks my entire work-flow.

Hi. Didn't even think about such a requirement. In next version I'll make credentials optional (with a warning though).

People shouldn't use git without having configured that. It would prevent incorrect commits landing in public repositories. Actually git defaults to some made-up local git author if it's not set, and that's less useful and sometimes invalid, provoking git-fsck errors.

I agree. A potential middle ground would be a small button that lets them skip that screen with a second confirmation dialog box with a warning about it.

Git explicitly shows a "Committer" line when typing the commit message if it chooses a default, so I also find not setting one globally and getting this reminder to be more useful:

  # Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
  # with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
  #
  # Committer: Ben Alpert <balpert@balpert-mbp.local>
  #
  # On branch master
  # Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
  #

FWIW, I solve this problem with ~/src/work and ~/src/personal. My default, system-wide config in .gitconfig are my personal creds. In ~/src/work, I have a direnv (http://direnv.net/) which configures my work credentials.

I used to do something similar to you, but this has been less effort to maintain/less repetition :) (which is nice, as our internal structure is lots of micro-repos so you're constantly cloning new things, and constantly adding creds becomes a hassle).

I love https://www.git-tower.com but it isn't free. However, you can try before you buy.

I have been using atlassian sourcetree for quite a while. It has very similar look and feel :)

https://www.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree

Yeah, I had to do a double take because it's almost screen for screen the UI of sourcetree.

All of the Mac Git clients pretty much look the same, though.

I sort of wondered about that thinking maybe there's only one logical way to design a git GUI on osx, but then even within this thread people brought up a few other examples that look totally different:

http://gitup.co/

http://gitboxapp.com/

But I do agree there are lots of very similar UIs for various git GUIs. And I'm sure SourceTree borrowed lots of their layout from others as well.

https://www.gitkraken.com/ is also different.

I switched from SourceTree to GitKraken, I don't know all the internal issues of what transpired at Atlasian on the SourceTree team, but to me it's just not the same product that the old Mac app was when they where independent.

I really like GitKraken and the team is taking feedback applying it constructively and putting out an impressive product. The part I really like is it's the same app on OSX, Linux and Windows using Electron to build it was a smart move on their part. My favorite feature has to be dropping a branch on another branch to create a pull request. I don't fanboy stuff much these days but I am a pretty big fan of their's right now.

Tower is pretty similar as well.

Anyone know is there are advantages of Fork over SourceTree?

I already got that question today. So, I'll just repost my answer:

here are some differences from the top of the head:

* Fork has tabbed interface

* For each commit you can see not only changes, but also the whole repository as it was at the moment of commit

* Diff viewer shows exact difference between two pieces of code. For example, here are both SourceTree and Fork showing the same commit: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/fn9mzjmyvhec2sa/2016-08-..., In ST (on the top) you need to figure out what has changed, in Fork (the bottom one) you see the difference clearly.

* Repository browser shows you many details about your repositories in the similar way as Finder does

* Commit list marks commits which do not belong to your commit tree with gray color

Number two is extremely compelling, I'm surprised it's not standard.

SourceTree has a tabbed interface as well now. The diff viewer might be interesting if it's really good but I think that to require an external viewer where the company focused on that as a product. On Mac most of the good options are paid though, might help you.

> SourceTree has a tabbed interface as well now.

Does it really? I just checked that I am on the latest version on osx and it's not tabbed. Is this a windows only feature or something?

Hm that might be. It has been a while since I last booted my osx SourceTree. Prefer command line with some terminal extensions there.

How do you enable the tabbed interface?

I have a hunch that he's running Sierra which adds tabbed interfaces to all apps.

SourceTree has a tabbed interface on Windows, but no on OSX. There's a number of differences between both versions, actually.

All of the OS X interfaces to Git are, to be honest, quite terrible. Sourcetree is awful. GitHub Desktop is even worse. I've tried a couple of others, the names of which elude me at the moment. I think most of it is less of a complaint against the software itself, and more of a problem with trying to present the complexities of Git in a simplistic UI. The simple fact is: Git as a whole is really, really freaking complex. Making the basic operations idiot proof is difficult enough, and then you have to try to offer a frontend for things like rebasing. Seriously though, fuck the products that pre-select all unstaged files to be added to the index on every commit. If I wanted the file staged, I would add it. Stop harassing me to add my development files - and no, I shouldn't have to gitignore them to prevent being constantly forced to deselect them. By all means, show checkboxes for me to add the files, but do not pre-check them.

I haven't seen a single interface that gets it right. JetBrains' integration in their IDEs is the closest to "mostly usable" I've seen, where branch creation, pulls, merges, conflict resolution, and pushes are fairly straightforward. It's still far from perfect - I do the lower-level Git > Pull rather than using the Update Project window because I have no idea what operations that window performs; and some rare operations still require dropping to command-line. I'd rate their implementation a 7/10 compared to the 3/10 other tools like Sourcetree provide.

A huge reason JetBrains has an insurmountable lead is its diff and merge editor. It is the best on the market, and the only usable side-by-side merge tool I can work with. Their 3-way diff is a dream to use. The last time I had to assist a co-worker merge a conflict using WinMerge on Windows, I gave up after 30 minutes. I flat out could not understand what the differences were, let alone figure out how to resolve the conflicts. Went back to my desk, checked out the branch in JetBrains' PhpStorm, performed the same merge, and had the conflicts resolved in a couple of minutes. It's no surprise to me that people using WinMerge erase work done by other people far too often.

Anti-disclaimer: not affiliated in any way with JetBrains. Their IDEs are mostly amazing, though it's frustrating that they focus 95%+ of their efforts on new features without going back and fixing what is wrong with their existing features. Their diff/merge editor, at least, is unmatched by any other product I have seen to date (other than the fact that CMD+F / CTRL+F to find in the diff editor is broken... again, JetBrains has some serious bugs that never get fixed).

Agree with all of your points. SourceTree nowadays does not select by default (at least my setup doesn't) but it's still far from optimal.

WinMerge? On Windows? I'm using beyond compare which is pretty nice when correctly configured, tortoise internal diff ain't bad either. Both have three way diff which I consider standard for any diff tool. Jetbrains indeed get a lot of things right. Using their resharper (visual studio), webstorms and itellij ultimate versions. They make amazing products.

If you haven't tried http://gitup.co/, give it a shot. It works completely different from any other Git client and might meet your needs.

This looks sweet! I use git quite lightly right now as I'm currently the only developer on my project. Gitup.co is the benchmark of Git apps for me right now. I barely need anything more than it and it's so incredibly light feeling. Like the app goes out of the way so that I can do what I need, such as reviewing lines to be staged.

It hasn't been receiving many updates unfortunately. I'm happy that another app has popped up! Looking forward to try it out.

Another gitup user here. What kind of updates were you hoping for? Seems pretty solid to me.

Looking at the website I see there's quite a few features I didn't know about! Maybe there's not really any update I would need after all.

I'm a Tower user, not really seeing a compelling differentiator here (tabs look interesting however), but perhaps someone is seeing something I'm not.

tabs are coming to Tower very soon. They are already part of the 2.5 beta :)

What will this will cost once it's out of beta? Do you have any plan to open source the codebase?

I suggest not using the magnifying glass icon for the repo favorites. It is confusing especially because you have a search field already on the right hand side. Might I suggest a star icon or a list icon for the list of repos?

I use the magnifying glass icon for the "Open quickly" window.

It's supposed to be something like Spotlight search in OS X (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/vopjz0e9tp1k1ul/2016-08-...).

The idiom is magnifying glass representing search.

The star icon more closely aligns with quick access to something used often.

i have been using GitBox (http://gitboxapp.com) for quite awhile now, but it seems like it doesn't get much in the way of updates, so i tried this.

Very first thing it does is write a file called "gitclient.log" to my home directory. i deleted it, and it came back the next time i started the app. I see nothing in the prefs that allows you to move the file somewhere else.

call me picky, but this is is a deal-breaker for me. nothing gets to write files to the root of my home directory. Right into the trash.

The developer is here. I've already mentioned, I wasn't ready to be on HN today (I'm not the OP), and that's why I missed logging. Anyway, I'm really sorry for that.

Right now I'm making a new build with the fix. Thanks for letting know.

Good on you for fixing it. I'll have another look after you put up a new build.

It's fixed now. I released new build. It's available on the website. All the users will receive the update automatically tomorrow. Thank you

I don't know why, but a lot of devs seem to just ignore ~/Library/Application Support/, where crap like this is supposed to go

It's worse on Windows, where Git tools (including some from Microsoft themselves!) expect to see a .ssh folder in your user folder root. Wrong. Bad. Windows doesn't work that way! There's not even any contract/guarantee the user folder root is writable by the user in Windows! Sigh.

Lazy Linux developers making lazy "ports" lazily.

Can confirm. Installing Git (or SSH) on Windows is frustrating beyond belief. I can't seem to ever get the .ssh folder in the correct place and when I do it doesn't make any sense (from a Windows standpoint). Grrrr...

I have GIT_SSH=plink in my environment. I don't get this.

Might be an issue with the port of openssh, rather than git itself.

How are you using Git in the first place? The first time it asked me to do `git config --global user.name` and `git config --global user.email` and produced a ~/.gitconfig file.

I didn't have to do that, probably because I already had that stuff lying around from earlier git usage. Fork recognized several of the repos I use without me having to configure anything.

It was missing a couple of crucial repos I need, and I was in the process of figuring out how to add them, when I hit the show-stopper that caused me to put the app in the trash.

The developer says he's put up a new version without that problem, so I will try again.

Does GitBox still work without issues for you? About 3 months ago it just stopped working completely on two separate machines, could never get it to work again. Had to switch to Tower instead.

yes, i still use gitbox every day. no problems i can think of.

I use tig (https://github.com/jonas/tig) because it doesn't require me to leave the terminal and I find it does everything I need from a git UI without getting in the way

Yet another Git GUI front end :-)

The homebrew version of the Git is bundled with two Git GUI frontends called gitk (invoked with `gitk`) and git-ui (invoked with `git gui`)

Yeah but they aren't very nice.

But they're very useable. Perhaps utilitarian. While I personally use the CLI 90% of the time, these fill in the gaps nicely.

It's not just homebrew, they're part of most standard git distributions (fully cross platform!)

I suspected but I was sure if that's the case or not.

What's an argument for switching from Sourcetree? I recently tried Git's own Mac client and was running back to Sourcetree within a few minutes...

It looks like it's a pretty common question :). I already answered on that question above.

For me SourceTree is slow and consumes a lot of memory. A good UI, but lean and fast would be a great improvement!

To compare SourceTree and Fork performance you can open a large repository (>10000 commits, like React) and try to check the initial commit.

Do you really need one? Sourcetree is awful. Slow. Bloated. It even fails to dim non-available UI elements all over the place. Doesn't know how to use checkbox widgets correctly.

I love the 5-6 seconds of waiting for its UI to gradually, slooowly, update itself after you do virtually any operation, no matter how simple.

I guess I haven't had any UI issues with it as far as asset popping, although going through their "big update" and the related auth problems left it pretty much unusable for a full week.

I normally use the command line for everything but I do use a graphical git UI (magit). It's so much better for staging and rebasing/fixups.

The only thing that jumps out at me is the visual of the git tree diagram on the left - other than that why not just use the command line?

Am I missing something?

Not sure why this is downvoted, I'm also interested to know how popular these sort of tools are compared to command line git and what the main advantages are.

I'm curious as well...I've tried using the Git integration within MSVS ,and it was a ~very~ unpleasant experience. I suppose in some instances it may be nice to visually see changes, but I've always preferred the command line for git.

Because I have dyslexia and command lines are torture for me.

Do you really need to justify people making tools more usable? Seriously? Isn't it enough to say, "if there's a quality UI, way more people can comfortably use the tool."

When you use a git GUI some console actions can be made easier:

- I can stage/unstage/reset my changes line-by-line

- I can observe the whole repository structure as it was at the moment of commit

- Gui client automatically keeps my submodules in the valid state so I don't need to check their state after each checkout

- I can quickly review the whole repo history (sometimes it can be useful when I am involved in a new project)

- I can see clearly the commits which are going to be pushed

All of these things are readily available from the native interface. Hmmm... Maybe a GUI man page browser could replace hundreds of these projects...

Because when you're doing anything outside of git commit am- "whatever" it's nice to be able to see the complete implications of your actions, what files have been modified, what lines in those files have changed, etc.,

git commit -v gives you the diffs provided you don't also use -m. Personally, I find -m to be a dangerous flag for commit for exactly the reasons you described not mention its hard to really do detailed multi-line commit messages with -m.

Having `git status` in a window-based UI is very nice. In magit, the window is divided into two sections horizontally: unstaged changes and staged changes. Each section contains multiple changed files that can be folded or expanded, and individual lines or hunks can be staged/unstaged as needed in order to prepare a commit.

While it is an emacs extension, non-emacs users can start it with a one-line command and treat it as a standalone application, e.g.

https://github.com/dandavison/emacs-config/blob/master/bin/e...

I know at least one non-emacs user who uses it that way.

There are some videos on youtube showing the magit UI. It would of course look more modern were it not an emacs extension but, emacs lisp programmers being as they are, I believe it is the most fully featured and powerful graphical git UI in existence.

If it doesn't include interactive rebase, it's not worth the cash because I'll have to go back to the CLI before I merge anything.

EDIT: Fork looks wonderful, I didn't mean to be so cold—just pointing out that it's hard to write a replacement for the original tool, and that I value it when it happens. I believe Sourcetree supports it.

> it's not worth the cash

Well, it is free :-) (at least while in beta)

Will it be paid after the beta? It's important to be upfront about these things.

I'm planning to keep the main version free. However, having a premium version with some extra features is also possible.

Fork is beta now. Interactive rebase is my backlog, I'm going to implement it during next few weeks.

I can't live without line by line commits. It's the only reason I use a GUI over the command line to begin with.

    git add -p

I wish someone would maintain a list of all current (and past, abandoned) Git UIs, including a feature grid. This would both help the community using them, and help people who think "oh, I'll write a Git UI!".

All of the ones I'm aware of are either cross platform (i.e. the user experience on single platforms is less than ideal) or closed source.

The web page lacks any screenshots of the change staging screens.

Yes. I looked for that too. Those are the screens that bring by far the most value for me in gui clients... (instead of "git add -p")

Thanks guys. I'll add them soon.

Neat. But please check if a name is taken, so we don't have to tell people that we used Fork to checkout a copy of the Linux source tree, and fix a bug in Fork.

For anyone looking for a Mac graphical git client, I should mention GitBox here (http://gitboxapp.com) as I've used it for years to augment the command line. Not all the GUI clients for git are useful, but I really like GitBox. Right mix of features.

This is awesome, and might actually finally replace GITX for me.

Needs a CLI to open repos with.

For now I'm using echo /Applications/Fork.app/Contents/MacOS/Fork > /usr/local/bin/fork && CHMOD +x /usr/local/bin/fork

which is not super ideal

*edit - typo

Same boat. Everything beyond GitX has too much clutter.. This is basically Gitx with tabs which is all I ever wanted :)

Reminds me of gitx (a good thing!) :)

Is there a way to only view commits that belong in the current branch (like git log)? The commits from the other branches are distracting when you're trying to read the history of a particular branch.

Not yet. This is a very popular request. I'm going to implement that next week.

For an open source alternative, remember there's also the forked version of GitX:

https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/

This. I can't really tell how much time of doing "git commit -p" GitX has saved me. It's a much easier way to visualize, stage and group changes into commits when you've made a bunch of unrelated changes.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned GitKraken yet (gitkraken.com). Cross-platform and beautiful. Edit: oh and free!

And super slow and lacking basic GUI functionality like multiple file selection and individual line staging.

It has had both for several releases now.

Shout out to SmartGit. Syntevo has being making version control that don't suck for over a decade. Tried and true.

i'd like to add Git Extensions ( https://gitextensions.github.io/ ) to the list. Open source, free, and with lots of features and plugin

Git itself is Free And Open Source; so I just use Free And Open Sourced clients for.

Do any of these clients support side by side diff? Why is that such a rare feature?

I also miss side-by-side diff and hope to implement it when I finish high priority features.

I don't get it, it doesn't do anything but crash. Whatever I do.

The Fork developer is here. I received few crash reports today, fixing them right now.

P.S. I wasn't ready to be mentioned on HN today :).

Love the GitX-style tree view!

How much faster is it than competitors?

Yeah, not sure what "fast" refers to.

The interface is very fluid and reactive for me. Not on a massive project though.

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