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Comment by Offpics | Hacker News Reader

Why would I use sublime merge over vscode with extensions?

Sublime Merge is a standalone app that isn't really all that integrated with Sublime Text, despite the name and coming from the same company. In other words, using Sublime Merge with VSCode is roughly the same as using it with Sublime Text. It's simply a great git client.

I'd guess the biggest reason to use Sublime Merge over a VSCode extension is that it's a small, very fast, native app. I've used it before when wanting to, e.g., search my git history for a change I'd made (IIRC a function name I remembered but which was no longer in the codebase). It's just snappier in general than VSCode. But I use command line git rather than any VSCode integration, so for the most part that serves me well enough anyway.

The killer feature for me is almost-instant launch from the command line. I usually use the git CLI. But if I want to inspect the repository history or view a complex diff, then I can quickly run `smerge .` to get a graphical client.

I like to have all my git repos in one place. I use VS code for frontend and JetBrains for backend.

Speed and elegance.

Reversed the question. Why should I move to vscode when sublime exists

As I wrote in another comment, ST's development essentially halted more than an year ago.

My last straw has been having to use a specialized plugin to workaround a bug that hasn't been fixed in years.

There may be platform reasons not use VSC - I don't argue about those - but as things are, VSC is an immensely more polished product.

>As I wrote in another comment, ST's development essentially halted more than an year ago.

Says who? Most products don't have public releases of anything and don't give details for their internal development but once a year or once every 1.5/2 years.

Sublime Text has been this way since 2010 at least, and yet, from release 1.0 we eventually got to release 3.2 (with 4.0 in behind the scenes dev). Every time and then, a new release / fix lands.

>As I wrote in another comment, ST's development essentially halted more than an year ago.

Sublime Text development is not halted. What has given you the idea that it halted more than a year ago?

>My last straw was being forced to use a plugin to fix a bug that hasn't been fixed in years.

What's the bug?

> Sublime Text development is not halted. What has given you the idea that it halted more than a year ago?

(As I wrote in another comment) The typical information channels (blog, twitter, development builds page) don't say anything.

I take the point that one can gather from the forum, the fact that there is ongoing development, but I think it's reasonable to be at least perplexed when a company is not active on the standard information channels, while at the same time expanding the team on a different product.

> What's the bug?

Files navigation panel goes out of whack, while switching between the editor and it with the keyboard; any keyboard-only user will experience it (although ST can't be used keyboard only, due to the inability to open a popup in the file panel via keyboard).

Somebody opened a bug open a long time ago, and somebody else wrote a snippet (a plugin, I suppose) to use as workaround.

There hasn't been a stable build since October. The user is complaining about the Sublime development cycle, which is unlike most companies today. Sublime frequently goes 6-12 months without an update (Sublime Merge was a few days from 1 year between updates), but there is a lot of development happening in the background and test builds do exist.

The Sublime team seems to prefers 1 big and stable update vs 12 smaller and possibly less stable updates. It has its advantages and disadvantages.

Regardless, Merge is still the best Git GUI out there and this update just made it better. And Text is my favorite simple text editor out there (though I do prefer using a full IDE for actual development)

They are actively working on Sublime Text 4, but I had the same impression when I checked their website.

They probably don't want people to stop buying ST3 while they're waiting for ST4...

Their license has changed as of last year. You no longer purchase ST3, but a license to ST for 3 years (including updating to ST4), and then freezing on that version of ST when the 3 years are up. They aren't selling software to users with ill intent.

That seems like an aweful model. If ST4 still takes another 4-5 Years until a proper stabel, I'm basically unable to update with a licence bougth today, despite the high price?

That's not a reversed question, it's a completely new one. It was about sublime merge not sublime text as you appear to have switched it to.

Unless you're seriously suggesting that someone would stop using the Sublime Merge tool just to use vscode IDE for the sole function of git repo management.

In which case, yeah, don't do that

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