Ask HN: What do you think of GitX?

27 pointsby pietervor 17 Jahren21 comments

GitX is an OS X GUI for git I've been working on for the past year. Lately more people have been working on it, and we're wondering what direction we should take GitX in.

We've created a small survey at http://www.survs.com/survey?id=DCJKLP2B&channel=BCNI75LXXR for those who have used GitX before. I'd also appreciate any comments left in this discussion.

For those who don't know GitX, the homepage is at http://gitx.frim.nl

Thanks!

15 comments

ericwallervor 17 Jahren

GitX is awesome software, I use it everyday. For the most part I'm comfortable with git on the commandline, but I still need a gui for looking at complicated branching situations and I can build commits much more quickly with a point and click interface. And as I'm sure you know, gitk/gitgui are terrible on OS X.

So, thanks for GitX!

thelibrarianvor 17 Jahren

I agree with everyone else here - GitX is very nice

The features I'd like to see (in descending order of importance):

- Remote repository interaction - push/pull etc. (this is the only thing stopping me from using GitX full time).

- Merging

- Cherry-picking

- Interactive rebase

FooBarWidgetvor 17 Jahren

GitX is great, but I miss one important feature: there seems to be no way to view the history of only a subdirectory, a specific file or a specific commit range, like gitk can:

gitk README.txt

gitk src/mycomponent

gitk experimental..stable-2-0

pietervor 17 Jahren

Try this:

    gitx -- README.txt

Or in GitX itself, in the tree view (bottom button bar, most right thing), right-click on a file or directory, and select "history for file"

jperrasvor 17 Jahren

I've used GitX on and off, but I have yet to find a feature compelling enough to use the graphical interface over the command line.

The search feature is probably the most useful, but there's not much there that can't be hacked together in a five-line script.

Now, don't get me wrong. The work that has been put into this application is great, and has come a long way since I started using it (around the 0.6 release, I believe). For people who prefer a GUI interface, I don't think you can do much better on OSX. However, you haven't done anything to sell command-line users on it. If that's not your goal, then there's no problem. If it is, well, I haven't been convinced yet ;-).

FooBarWidgetvor 17 Jahren

Then how do you view complex merge histories?

jperrasvor 17 Jahren

git log --graph (as of git 1.6.3)

For some additional horsepower (not necessarily related to viewing merge histories), you can install Tig: http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/

babyshakevor 17 Jahren

The GUI should have fetch functionality. Why doesn't it?

I think that GitX is a really good complement to Github. Maybe there's a way to pull in issues and other things from Github?

bbbvor 17 Jahren

First of all, thanks a lot for GitX! I use it pretty much daily and like it a lot.

One thing that I'd like to see improved would be its support for bundles. I use GitX to manage (among other things) Latex documents that include vector graphics created with OmniGraffle. I keep both the exported PDF and also the .graffle "file" under version control. It would be nice if GitX (optionally) would recognize the bundles as such and not display their constituent files individually.

texelvor 17 Jahren

GitX is awesome... but for some reason it won't open one copy of my (particularly large) repository. It works on a fresh clone though so it's probably my fault.

pietervor 17 Jahren

GitX used to have some problem when a repository had lots of files. That should have been fixed in 0.7 though.

cmars232vor 17 Jahren

Very nice, I had the same problem with a huge repo and had written off GitX, just updated and now it works!

texelvor 17 Jahren

It works! Thanks... and again, great job :)

esadvor 17 Jahren

I know this fits probably better into separate tool, but one thing I still miss about TortoiseSVN are the statistics.

Although these were very basic, still it was fun to see from time to time how long the project has been going on, how many commits per day you had and other information porn.

Anyway, GitX is a wonderful tool that does it's job and it's great complement to the command line. I use it mostly for history and branching visualization and except that it something it would hang on large commits (not file count-wise, more when trying to show big diffs), it has been serving me well all this time and I have to thank you and all the contributors!

olifantevor 17 Jahren

I love GitX and use the commit view all the time. The visual diff makes it so simple to see what you have changed.

I don't bother teaching coworkers that much about command-line git now, I just point them to GitX, which suffises for 90% of their interactions with git.

One simple thing I'd like to have is the ability to just click a button and pull or push from a remote branch.

qaexlvor 17 Jahren

Main thing I'd like to see in gitx:

Three-panel merging, a la Meld.

dmosevor 17 Jahren

I love gitX ..I use it daily. Sometimes I find it hangs if you are switching branches via the command line though.

pilifvor 17 Jahren

I'm using GitX daily, though only for looking at the history.

I would love to see blame support though.

bumbledravenvor 17 Jahren

I love it, but it hangs quite often for me with "Refreshing index", whatever that means.

jayairvor 17 Jahren

I use it and like it. Keep up the good work!

dddvor 17 Jahren

XCode integration!