SourceTree for Windows 2.0
blog.sourcetreeapp.com
blog.sourcetreeapp.com
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.
SourceTree's design is nice (although it could use some improvement), but there are so many niggling issues that just get in the way. Combine those with frequent application restarts due to unresponsive tools and windows and you have a recipe for finding a better tool.
I recommend Git Extensions.
That said, I wish that SourceTree had a Linux client. People complain about it, but given that it's a better client than GitHub's and it's pretty polished; pretty good for free.
One of our goals over the past couple of years was to simplify SourceTree and make it easier for developers to get started with Git. Admittedly we did not always hit the right balance, but you can be sure we care and listen.
We didn't remove the negative comments from our blog, we removed all comments from our blog to minimise the number of channels on which people engage in discussions. Sorry if it created a perception that we don't care, it's quite the opposite.
Cheers, Jens
I think you are misunderstanding how the new flow is for repo viewing.
The tab (+) button is the replacement for the sidebar repo list. You are not expected to open every single repo and have them all as a separate tab. You are expected to open a reasonable amount of repos at once, do work with them, and then close them. If you want to look at other repos, you open them via the tab (+) button.
I don't think its that big of a deal to change it like that.
That's not to say this I think this is a perfect app. What I want them to improve is making it a bit nicer when you have more than ~10 repos open at once. The tabs are way too wide and scrolling through them is terrible with the way the scroll buttons work right now.
If it's the former, then it's absolutely useless for my use-case, and a great example of removed functionality.
If it's the latter, then they have gone backwards in UX design (for my personal use case) - that is, it is now an additional layer of barrier for me to see and access all my projects, for what benefit? What problem is this solving?
If the only answer to the previous question is something to the effect of "cleaner UI" or "less clutter" then there is a fundamental problem with how they approach updates.
It really sucks that this is even a thing, because I feel bad for shitting on Atlassian so much, when I use Sourcetree almost exclusively, and have for quite a long time.
Most users do have not that many repos and work on only very few a day. The former UI had two ways to switch repos, and to be honest it happened quite often to me that I had selected a repo on the left, but not the tab, and so was looking at the wrong stuff for a few seconds.
So I see your pain, but have to agree with the thinking behind this change.
(Although I think the new repo selection screen is not very pretty, misses functionality [I can see all my folder opened at the same time] and wastes so much space - it should have just been like the old repo list but in a different location)
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)
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
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.
So it really is "SourceTree for Windows 2.0", not "SourceTree 2.0 for Windows".
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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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.
Interestingly, it comes with integrations with bitbucket, github, etc to resolve pull requests and review comments.
I don't care about any of those currently, though.
FWIW, the beta version did manage to update to final 2.0
That's great. So hope the updates are now more stable.