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Comment by winrid | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Desktop is actually pretty awesome.

What I don't get is why MongoDB Compass is so slow. It's almost like they have artificial timeouts everywhere.

I was explaining to someone how to generate an SSH key, they way I would normally do when explaining git to someone not exposed.

They instead used the GitHub app and their GitHub password. I didn't see any interaction with an SSH key.

I am not sure how I feel about that. Something seems not right about it.

You can use http basic since forever with git....

Why?

Yes, but something doesn’t feel right about it no?

This isn't HTTP Basic Auth, though: these days git with the right Credential Managers (and Git for Windows comes with a good one built in) support OAuth Access Tokens obtained with full OAuth login flows including 2FA authentication. It's theoretically no worse than SSH PKI, and in terms of practicality is often better because it is easier and more convenient. (For the users, it is clearly more complex that "install openssh" to implement if you are trying to build a git host that supports OAuth Access Token auth.)

Recently I helped someone get set up with VS Code and Git, and it subverted all of my preparations by simply popping up an OAuth window to authenticate.

How is it awesome? Last time I checked you couldn't even check out or make a branch based on a previous commit.

You can create a branch from the current head which isn't exactly what you said but fits my use case.

But, it just works really well for simple work flows - I like it on Windows for my projects. Has keyboard bindings, is fast, and does what it's trying to do well.

If you want to do more advanced stuff maybe Git Kraken, or just the CLI.

I use Sublime Merge, it's fairly fully featured.

Seems like GitHub desktop is mostly aimed at people who want to use git like it's Dropbox.

I don't think there's need to ascribe some "Want to use X like it's Y" intentions to people. The tagline "simplifies your development workflow" certainly doesn't make me think of Dropbox at least.

Maybe it's mostly aimed at people who like the features of GitHub Desktop?

Disagreed, at least on Mac, while there are (free) apps like Fork.

Fork is wonderful, a well-designed and performant Git GUI, native on each platform (Windows and macOS).

https://fork.dev/

I bought a license a while back, since I use it every day. That said, I believe they're moving towards a "trial" model, rather than "free" as in beer.

I do wish it was open sourced, but also wish them the best in making it a profitable venture. It's great software, it deserves good funding so the creators and users can benefit from it.

Do you happen to know how Fork compares with Tower (https://www.git-tower.com)? I've been a Tower user for quite some time and like it, but I'm always interested in better options.

I don't have any experience with Tower, other than having heard the name. From their feature description, I can say that Fork does not have multi-user or team management functionality, if that's important for your use case.

I'd recommend giving it a trial run. For me it ticks all boxes for personal and professional use, I'm very happy with it. The managing of a large number of repos could be better, but I do OK with a single "hub" folder to keep all repos, with nested folders and symlinks.

Haven't tried it on Mac. Again, GitHub Desktop is not meant to be a complete Git CLI as GUI. It's free too.

I haven't tried Fork. For my side projects I don't need to merge or anything often, and when I do I use Idea's three way merge tool anyway.

It does take a long time to start and that is apparently Electron :-(

Are you seeing issues somewhere else?

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