Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

http://gitboxapp.com

by oleganza • 16 years ago

146 71 16 years ago

gitboxapp.com

dabeeeenster2• 16 years ago

65 MB? For a git browser? Really?

DamonOehlman• 16 years ago

Well it looks pretty. Pretty doesn't come cheap ya know ;)

AllTom3• 16 years ago

I don't know why it takes that much space, but that doesn't seem like enough space to worry about on a Mac.

AllTom3• 16 years ago

Some of the applications on my computer that are bigger than Gitbox: Google Chrome, Wireshark, Inkscape, iPhoto, Komodo Edit, etc. My hard drive barely noticed when I downloaded Gitbox, so practically the only difference was a few extra seconds of download time that I didn't notice, that's all I was trying to say. Your comment was helpful to the developer in the end, so kudos.

oleganza14• 16 years ago

First, it is not a browser. You actually do commits, merges and manipulate branches.

The size is that big because Gitbox is bundled with official Git binaries so you don't have to install anything else. I will see how to bring the size down in the next versions. Anyway, this fact does not affect the performance and does not eat much memory.

to2• 16 years ago

so is that better than gitx?

dabeeeenster2• 16 years ago

Thanks for the reply - I'm always suspicious of large binaries with OSX!

pornel• 16 years ago

git-osx-installer package takes 4.3MB, but your git.bundle takes 150MB.

The problem is that the bundle contains exactly same binary 104 times (git, git-add, git-apply, etc. are identical files, 1.3MB each). These should be symlinks.

It might be ZIP's fault (doesn't support symlinks AFAIK). I distribute my apps as tar.bz2, and nobody complained yet.

microtonal• 16 years ago

No Github integration, and does not seem to provide much over GitX. At the very least, GitX does have an inline diff viewer when you browse revisions. In Gitbox you have to click a modified file, and then it will launch FileMerge. Too uncomfortable.

to2• 16 years ago

agreed. i dont know why one would pay 40 bucks for an app that already exists for free.

oleganza14• 16 years ago

Gitbox is superior to what you have today. Very common things like commiting and checking the status and log are much faster and cleaner than in the command line or GitX. It is easier to extract a file from history, compare and manage the branches. You also pay for a level of attention to details in Gitbox, I explain it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1944698

iipalindromeii• 16 years ago

Which fork of GitX would you recommend?

Maintaining a tool like this is basically unpleasant. You either need to be maintaining it for internal customers in a large company, or you need to sell it as a product - in other words, it's one of those products you really want to get paid for.

Maybe having a paid project will help keep this app actively developed.

sant0sk1• 16 years ago

Brotherbard's fork has a bunch of additional features and I've found it to be pretty stable. I use it daily and highly recommend it.

https://github.com/brotherbard/gitx

makeramen• 16 years ago

holy crap. this might actually get me to finally make the jump from hg to git.

joao• 16 years ago

There seems to be also another git client coming out this month: http://www.git-tower.com/ — Git Tower

The UI seems a little bit more confusing, not something simple. I still use GitX.

Rygu• 16 years ago

I'm using the Git Tower beta and I have to say, it works like a charm. It does everything that GitX does, but provides a better UI for everything.

The only thing I miss from GitX is the ability to discard changes per changed line/block. In Tower, it is possible to stage per changed block though.

[edit] One thing that I forgot to mention is that the developers are very active and responsive, even though it's a closed source project. I made a few suggestions and got replies for each of them within a week. (Compared to Gitbox, Git Tower is built by a whole team of devs.)

nestlequ1k2• 16 years ago

I've been trying hard to use GitBox for the last 2 month (beta version), but the lack of a quick view for commits makes me always revert back to GitX.

With GitX, I can easily cycle through all the files and see a quick summary of what was changed. With GitBox, I have to double click on every single file to get the diff. Either that, or just blind commit files. Not good options.

GitBox has the best push/pull functionality of any git client so far. But its crappy commit panel is really holds it back.

oleganza14• 16 years ago

All points a valid and will be addressed in the upcoming versions.

nestlequ1k2• 16 years ago

Awesome. Thanks!

SandB0x• 16 years ago

The tagline seems quite negative:

"Linus made Git for himself. Gitbox brings Git to everyone."

Without Linus' free creation this app wouldn't exist at all.

oleganza14• 16 years ago

It's not negative at all. It is a credit to Linus as a creator. Linus made a great tool and the command line UI is enough for him. Gitbox just makes his creation accessible to others and everybody wins.

Hoff• 16 years ago

Please don't get defensive. Accept the feedback. Move on.

And yes, whether it was intended or not, that statement can be inferred as a negative.

JonnieCache2• 16 years ago

Linus did make git literally for himself, and by extension the kernel community. If you look at his quote about the name "Git," I think it portrays accurately the wry attitude of mock-antagonism linus feels around git:

"I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git." - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Git_(software...

mxcl2• 16 years ago

It's only negative if you want to read it that way.

fuxx0r2• 16 years ago

so, iam on ppc, will you provide 10.5 in the future?

oleganza14• 16 years ago

Unfortunately, no. Gitbox is designed on top of GCD and blocks which are available in 10.6 (which is Intel-only). The tradeoff is worth it: with GCD I was able to implement sophisticated control flow cleaner and faster, and fix a lot of bugs.

fuxx0r2• 16 years ago

i see =/ well, ppc is drifting slowly out. but iam looking forward to buy a intel mac in the future, hopefully your application is still maintained =)

timc3• 16 years ago

Sorry, but that just looks confusing. Easy to stick with the shell tools.

itsnotvalid• 16 years ago

Command line version suits me well. If I need xcode integration, I can use xcode 4 preview, which has merging tools and code comparison boiled in.

By the way the site talks about a discount until Dec 1, I guess I'd skip that discount no matter what, as others mentioned a tool called Git Tower which seems to have a pleaser UI.

Some sites also suggested another open sourced Git UI called Gity http://gngrwzrd.com/ other than GitX which to me is just another blend of git-gui. In the OSS part Gitnub (https://github.com/Caged/gitnub) is a UI for Github and Git in general, but this one is not pure Cocoa (requires RubyCocoa.

JonnieCache2• 16 years ago

Obviously the command line version is going to suit most people here better. That is completely missing the point.

This will be perfect for those of us who work in teams with less technical people who still need r/w access to repositories. This will save us from training the designer and manager types in our organisations to use the command line tools, and as such will pay for itself.

AllTom3• 16 years ago

Developers, too. Until you study and play with git for a long time, local/remote branches and pushing/pulling are hard to understand and very hard visualize. With Gitbox it's like reading your e-mail. I promote it at work as "the git client with five buttons" because that simplicity is worth a lot.

js4all• 16 years ago

Git comes with a GUI tool. Run gitk to see commits, comments, history and diffs. I use it a lot and never needed another GUI tool.

Anyway, great to see a new tool for devs who need more GUI support.

masklinn2• 16 years ago

> Git comes with a GUI tool. Run gitk

You're not an OSX user are you?

frou_dh3• 16 years ago

As in OS X users are less tolerant of badly designed GUIs?

frou_dh3• 16 years ago

Well, everyone's talking about alternatives, but kudos for putting your own touch on the concept and launching your app. I'm going to try it.

veidr• 16 years ago

This is great. I hate maintaining a fork of gitx myself, and actually gitx is markedly inferior to a high-quality commercial Mac application. There just haven't been any of those for git yet.

For Subversion, there are Versions and Cornerstone, which are really much more pleasant to use, but nowadays of course most of projects are using git. So I am stoked to see a promising developer take this on. I'm sure he will make a run at adding missing stuff like optional inline diff viewing and whatnot.

stevefink• 16 years ago

It's a good effort - although I agree with a lot of the folks commenting here, I cannot recommend this to anyone without Git experience over GitX. The good news is, there is plenty of room for an intuitive GUI based Git app, particularly with GitHub integration. It's frustrating working with non-developer types who need access to static assets that need to be versioned. I need to get them an SVN equivalent such as Cornerstone or Versions. Teaching them the command line and Git is an all too time consuming process and I have no choice but to ensure they know at least the basics on smaller projects where non-developers are tightly coupled with things like HTML/images, etc.

flipgimble• 16 years ago

Can anyone compare this to SourceTree? http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

which appears to support git and mercurial as a native MacOSX app and only 8MB download. Both appear to be too early of a release for me to shell out $40 for.

jonnii• 16 years ago

I was going to post about sourcetree. I downloaded the trial, it's pretty good. It's written by the author of ogre3d. You should check it out.

oleganza14• 16 years ago

Thanks for sharing the link. I have commented earlier on SmartGit, the same ideas apply to SourceTree as well.

PS. The size is almost a non-issue since it does not affect performance and you don't download the app every day. Anyway, the size will go down in the next updates.

bobx11• 16 years ago

i recently downloaded a big pile of them... gitx (the development build) is by far the most feature rich one that I tried

idan• 16 years ago

While it's nice to see native Git apps taking off like this, I don't think this app is mature enough for daily use yet. Having to leave the app for a diff is too much of an interruption.

I like that the author is paying attention to little details, and I'm sure he'll improve the app over time, but right now I'm not seeing $40 worth of value over GitX.

jomama2• 16 years ago

Great job. Simplifying git into an intuitive and usable UI is really challenging, and I think you're on the right track.

The toolbar is great. It's very clear what's going on, what branch you're on, where you're going to push to, and how to push to another branch. Collapsing branch checkout into the local branch popup menu works really well.

Collapsing history and local changes into one list kicks ass; probably my favorite feature/design decision. Fetching ahead of time and showing new commits to be merged, along with highlighting new commits to be pushed, is probably the best thing I've seen done in a version control client.

I'm not a fan of checkboxes for staging. I was bummed when Xcode 4 went this route with their new git integration. But I like that select files -> commit does exactly what you expect, staging selected files automatically. Cmd-return to commit is great.

Here's some constructive feedback on a few details:

- It's unclear how to add a repository. File -> Open works, but this interaction feels broken because it's not a document-based app. It's a one-window collection based app with a source list. So the copy should read File -> Add Repository. But this should also be accessible in the UI. I dig the simplicity of the UI, and that there's no bottom bar chrome (which is challenging to achieve), but in this case there really should be a [+] button for adding repositories. I can understand the choice to not go that route, but it's a standard UI convention for source list based apps, so users expect it and are confused what to do without it.

- A source list should never resize with the window. The source list should stay fixed while the content view resizes with the window. And in the case of an NSSplitView with three panes, one should probably resize while the others stay fixed; this isn't as much of a rule, but it feels better in the UI. I would resize the middle view (which is usually standard), because it's most likely that the user wants to read more of the commit messages, apposed to the changed file list. This behavior is pretty standard, and definitely expected with the source list, but you don't get it for free from Cocoa. You have to resize the views manually with an NSSplitViewDelegate method. I noticed a few apps hit the market recently that missed this UI detail, presumably because it's not clear how to do this. Here's a simple example for a two pane, source/content split view. http://pastie.org/1346451

- The changed file list is a pixel south when you're viewing local changes to commit. With AppKit controls like tables, outlines, split views, etc., you sometimes have to push them a pixel into their container views, because they draw their own borders and when you have one inside the other, you can end up with multiple pixel borders. Or it's just off.

- Keyboard support is supper important with this kind of app. This is more a feature request, but I expected the left and right arrow keys to navigate me from repository to history list to changed file list and back. This interaction would speed up workflow tremendously.

- There's no reason for the source list to be collapsible, especially because it zeros out the source selection and kills the content view, but the content of the changed file list persists. This feels broken. There are some NSOutlineViewDelegate methods to tweak this and get it to show up as a section header, iTunes style.

- Prefixing the repo name with the parent directory is an interesting design decision. To me it feels a little broken because the repos are reordered in a non-alphabetic way, respecting their parent folders instead of the repo's folder name. It works well when it's /company/project, but feels busted when it's /some-folder/project. If they're not listed alphabetic to the repository folder, they should probably be user reorder-able.

- The icon is under-polished, but I like the composition and style.

- The diff is the deal-breaker. If this app had a built-in diff, I would say it's one of the best version control clients I've seen, even at it's early stage and under polish, because the simplified interaction is really good. Add an inline diff as soon as possible.

I'm working with a team on a git client as well, and we've spent a considerable amount of time iterating interaction ideas, trying to find simplified was to expose the power and flexibility of git, and in places have come up with similar solutions. Honestly, it's hard. So mad props for making a three button git app. It's really impressive. Keep at it.

And don't listen to nay-sayers. Feedback is great, but all we can do is look for the useful parts of it, and not get pulled down by the rest. I've spent a fair amount of time looking into the potential user base of git clients, and it's a really wide spectrum. Hardcore cli advocates are sub-set.

jomama2• 16 years ago

whoops. http://pastie.org/1347896

oleganza14• 16 years ago

Thanks again for the feedback. First week after the 1.0 release I was busy working on improvements and have addressed many of issues you describe.

1. In 1.1 File->Open menu is renamed to Open Repository. Add button will appear in a totally redesigned window layout in the next releases.

2. Source list resizing is fixed in 1.1

3. I have removed the standard headers from the changes list which fixes the problem. This view will be greatly improved later, though.

4. Yes, keyboard navigation is crucial. Now you can navigate between all the panes with arrow keys. Plus, jumping through the list of repos or commits is optimized.

5. Source list collapsing will be addressed later. 1.1 fixed the issue with persisted changes list when no repo is selected.

6. Repo organization will improve in one of the nearest releases.

Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

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