GitHub Desktop 1.0
github.com
github.com
I really really would not want to use a "productivity" type of application that is made in Electron but I also know that many people do not mind.
This said we are again in the era where it does not matter to most of the users. If it would people would stop using Atom/VScode and others. We all know that there is not a more cost effective way of building multiplatform apps (all things considered).
We will have to cope with this as long as there is not real competition.
I just tested it agains sourceTree, which is native, and I can't see any differences. It loads as fast, navigation and selection take the exact same time to load.
The only difference, github desktop eat 200mb instead of 60mb for sourcetree.
At the end of the day I will still use the command line, except for diff. But for a git gui, I can't really see what you mean by sluggish.
Such a shame because it's one of the few GUI apps for git that actually looks good and has nice workflow.
32GB will be minimum system requirements for a developer at this rate.
It is a JavaScript app.
That said, I personally don't have a huge issue with Electron apps on face value - some of them (VSCode, for example) seem to outperform their native counterparts quite handily (in this case, VS - install time, upgrade time, cold start time, warm start time, actual usage). That tells me that the implementation choices affect performance as much as the underlying technology.
Electron apps might beat other electron apps (VSCode over Atom), but we're still a long sight off from electron apps beating compiled ones in most cases.
None of your alternatives have built in JavaScript debugging or multiple projects per workspace.
Debugging: Fair enough. VSCode is starting to stray toward IDE, which the others described specifically exclude. They focus on the text editing and leave the debugging for other specialized programs. VSCode would make sense to be an IDE since it's coming from a Visual Studio lineage though.
Multiple Projects per Workspace: Sublime has this as a project can have any number of folders added to it. A sublime project is equivalent to a VSCode Workspace unless I'm missing a nuance somewhere. Vim and Emacs are less useful in this regard, though they have project management plugins. Most of the time, Vim and Emacs will just save off a workspace in what they call a "session". You can load the session and be exactly where you left off (down to the cursor position). These can also be configured to happen on startup/shutdown.
If they ever EoL the old true native Github Desktop, I'll probably switch full time to Fork, which is native Cocoa and generally great. I already use it a lot, but there are times when Github Desktop does things a little better.
I've been using either the command line or GitKraken, but it's always nice to see a new tool :)
You may actually get me to delete SourceTree, which is a high bar to clear. Despite all the major issues with SourceTree, like locking the main thread for 3 minutes, pinning the CPU to 100% just because a file was staged, and refreshing the diff view 100 times in a single minute, I haven't been able to switch away from yet.
P.S. your Cartfile is being copied into the resources folder :)
* A lot of the right-click context menus have vanished from the old version to the new, which really changes the workflow.
* Integration with Atom is super buggy, to the point where it literally doesn't work for me. I used to be able to right click and open in Atom, but now if I use the shortcut to open in Atom it just gives an error claiming Atom isn't installed when it is. Opening up the old github desktop app and attempting to launch atom had no issues.
* Integration with Github itself is super flaky. Normally the "open in desktop" launches the github desktop client, but after installing the new version it literally doesn't do anything at all.
I'm honestly really surprised that this is a v1.0.0 release. Normally Github does a better job of making sure their releases, well, actually work.
It looks like theres an osx port now. Im super excited. GitExtensions was literally the best at everything for my workflows.
Disclaimer: I'm from the Tower team. If you have any questions we're happy to help: https://bit.ly/towersupport
I haven't tried gitkraken though, maybe it sucks equally much, my point is that there is an open market spot for good git GUI.
Coincidentally, it's currently on Kickstarter[0]. Mind you, this is a fully functional, mature and free product - the author is just trying to fund next few years of development.
--
[0] - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-th...
Some people have gotten it to work and they've indicated that they're interested in officially supporting it at some point. Perhaps it will get more attention now that the 1.0 release is finally done.
git-fork.com
I was hoping GUI for more administrative purposes. It would be cool to get desktop notifications when issues are created, code is pushed, etc. I have yet to see a tool/extension that integrated with GitHub this deeply.
It definitely seems like this could be useful for those who don't want to mess with the CLI (which is perfectly reasonable IMO).
I know hating Electron apps is the new fad, but it would be nice to check the facts before you grab your fork.
My guess is that compared to Slack, Github app doesn't really do much when idle. Slack fetches user statuses, new messages, notifications and so on. When you have an open channel with ongoing conversations that will add up in the RAM. This app doesn't seem to do anything when idle, so the RAM usage doesn't increase.
OSS really spoilt people.
Electron has many benefits (lots of people know JS; CSS is better than the standard macOS tools for GUIs). But with Slack, Atom, Hyper and now Github Desktop running on Electron, the memory usage is getting painful. They all use several hundred MBs each, sometimes with multiple processes so even more in aggregate.
Hopefully with more growth of Electron, there will be more shared resources to spend on improving its memory usage.
This Electron craziness looks like milenials just woke up and never experimented how nice it was to use MSHTML and XUL applications.
I have high hopes Electron will join them.
That said, I didn't use Macs during that period, so maybe they were awful on Mac or something. I assume Camino existed for a reason.
Has anyone found something that actually works?
I’ve also had some broken commits due to changes not being shown until I hit refresh.
At least they’ve fixed the large diff lockup’s. And yes, the line and hunk staging is brilliant.
On my laptop, it uses less than 80MB of RAM
For comparison, gitk is about 14 MB for the same project.
Overall, GitHub's desktop app seems to have fairly stable memory use in my experience, though that stable mark seems relatively high compared to native counterparts. Not nearly as bad as some Electron apps, which seem to have no ceiling to their memory usage. Not a horrible price to pay, if you can accept the stable overhead.
Update: I just installed it and while it does take 80 MB, there are two "Github Desktop Helper" processes that total another 100 MB.
It took a little getting used to, but the new version is much smoother and faster.
Two additions I would love to see ported over from github.com
* A toggle between inline and split diffs * A summary view with all changes on the current branch, not just per file changes
I hope they don't discontinue their existing Windows and OSX Desktop Apps because this experiment is a value downgrade.
the electron app is noticeably faster than the old client for me (on windows)
electron probably also means it'll be easier for them to add features in the future
I hope it can be turned off now, I wasn't able to find that setting.
the new client is actually much faster for me, it starts up faster (1.5s to show the gui fully loaded vs 4s to show the gui and another 3s to finish loading what's on the screen) and there's no lag when using it (unlike with the old client)
i also prefer the new ui, i find it to be clearer than the old one
GitHub desktop is designed for our non Linux users. We felt like you weren't comfortable with a command line so we targeted you. Minimum system requirements quad core CPU and 32GB of ram.
Also if someone is a developer, they're only hurting themselves by not making an effort to get comfortable with the command line. Like half of my workflow wouldn't be possible without a familiarity with it.
Github is making a play to be the "Git for Everyone people". Note they call out that the new client has image diffs (great for... graphic design versioning).
They're forming a brand that could eventually compete with stuff like Perforce on a smaller scale with designers and artists if they can make them feel at home using "GitHub" (Git + creature comforts from GitHub).
And to the developer point, everyone starts somewhere. As a kid Git didn't click until I started using visual clients. And "the command line" is a huge surface to get comfortable with.
I just installed the new client and it's using 421mb of RAM. You are right that it's idling at zero cpu though.
Not sure why you’d bash it — the git cli is far from perfect and I for one welcome other perspectives on solving collaboration.
Now changing it to electron is another matter... I only have so much ram guys! With slack, Spotify, vscode, and a browser open on the same machine I’m screwed!
This is NOT an acceptable standard of comments here on HN. Not everyone has to be a power user. Using a GUI app over CLI is not a big deal.
Quit trying to "fix the marketing" with your snarky comments.
No. I was expecting a disaster and instead I got a nice little Git client (not really feature packed, but the advertised features worked as expected). It starts quite quickly (compared to GitKraken for instance which takes ~10 seconds on my machine). UI is very responsive. After few minutes of usage ate 120 MB of RAM which is less than Sublime Text which I also had running in the background (and compared to more than 500 MB used by Slack, also an Electron app). At idle it uses almost 0% CPU.
I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed. I was under impression that HN was better than that - issuing judgements before actually trying the bloody app.
Edit: To clarify - I am using version 1.0.0, on macOS 10.12.
I left it running when I first wrote the comment. Went back to it just now, after nearly two hours, and the memory usage didn't increase. Still at 120-130 MB.
My guess is that compared to Slack, Github app doesn't really do much when idle. Slack fetches user statuses, new messages, notifications and so on. When you have an open channel with ongoing conversations that will add up in the RAM. This app doesn't seem to do anything when idle, so the RAM usage doesn't increase.