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Comment by nusaru | Hacker News Reader

So basically, now we can do `git diff master` in a GUI. Hooray, I guess.

I use Github Desktop. One thing I do like a lot is that the diff I see is exactly what my code reviewers will see.

Personally, I spend a lot of time reviewing other's code ad also going through my own PR's in Github. I'm very familiar with that view. I think it helps my brain that I use the same diff view when I'm working locally and when I'm reviewing code on Github.

>> So basically, now we can do `git diff master` in a GUI.

> One thing I do like a lot is that the diff I see is exactly what my code reviewers will see.

What will they see in the diff that you can see using Github Desktop that you wouldn't see by running git diff master?

Colors and fonts especially. After ten years my brain is fast at reading a GitHub diff. It’s pretty slow at reading a terminal diff because I don’t do it very much.

Presumably most people use an editor or IDE for coding and it's likely that editor or IDE could also be used to display diffs, so I don't really see colors or fonts being an issue. The IDE or editor could also be configured to use colors and fonts similar to what's used in Github. For example, vim has a colorscheme[1] that's similar to what Github offers.

[1] https://github.com/cormacrelf/vim-colors-github

The UI for the diff is actually useful though.

Much easier to read and browse than a terminal.

You're not wrong. Personally, I just used GitHub's web UI to preview my PRs, but I suppose having a local GUI makes it easier to amend commits and not have to force push changes.

Electron apps eat my ram and web UIs run like shit when backed by a large private instance.

It was mentioned elsewhere but you might find Sublime Merge to be useful; it's not based on Electron, it's very fast, and it makes working with various git workflows a lot nicer (to me, at least).

You can use `git difftool` to view the diff in your tool of choice (including gui editors).

I've found piping the output of git diff to my editor makes it much easier to browse compared to using the UI. For instance, searching for a particular file or line of code it much easier in the editor compared to the browser.

Why use nano when vi works just fine?

Yeah, what we really need is yet another electron app.

I mean, if vi is what you prefer, more power to you.

I'm assuming the point was power tools versus very basic and more approachable ones, and I think there's a place for both. To use this example, I use vim most of the time but sometimes I jump into nano to do a quick edit on something.

I don't love most of the GUI tools for git, but I use Sourcetree for 10,000 ft visualization and can't really parse CLI git --log graphs, even if they're heavily decorated.

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