GitHub for Windows

https://github.com/blog/1127-github-for-windows

by sant0sk1 • 14 years ago

549 236 14 years ago

github.com

statictype5• 14 years ago

This is actually very cool.

I expect this will drive up the adoption of GitHub by a measurable amount.

RandallBrown2• 14 years ago

I really like the Mac app. Yes, it can be a little buggy and get in to some weird states, but when it works, I think it is one of the best ways to use source control.

I've been doing a lot of Windows development lately and I've missed a good git tool. I'm very happy about this.

christianbryant• 14 years ago

A part of me wants to cry, yet I was an early user of WinCVS back in the day, due to workplace requirements. I know I will reluctantly be an early adopter of this, as well, since GitHub is the cat's meow :)

tallowen• 14 years ago

I find it interesting that both native apps (for Windows and Mac) try hard to emulate the look and feel of their respective operating system.

One thing that is great about github.com and other websites is that it feels the same across multiple environments. Furthermore web browsers try to emulate their own style not that of the host operating system. If I use chrome or firefox in mac or windows they feel basically the same.

I wonder if more applications will go in the direction of trying to match the feel of the host operating system over the feel of there application as a whole.

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

I would hope so. Being a good OS citizen is nothing but a good thing. Fewer surprises, fewer quirks, more intuitive to the user (if done right), etc.

It's nice to know GitHub made the effort.

estel• 14 years ago

Precisely. Making the effort is half the game. It's a similar scenario with mobile apps: far too many Android apps are ported across from iOS without consideration for the different platform (usually by using a tab bar). And it really shows.

benatkin• 14 years ago

> Being a good OS citizen is nothing but a good thing.

Actually there are pros and cons to adapting an application to the platform instead of adapting the platform to the application. You're also conflating the OS with the window manager.

RandallBrown2• 14 years ago

One of the biggest reasons that I prefer Mac to Windows is that most Mac developers spend a lot more time working on a native look and feel. The common OS shortcuts and UI metaphors go a long way towards making an app easier to use.

harrylove2• 14 years ago

I've been developing web apps for Windows 8 lately using the native -ms- proprietary CSS styles and UI hooks available in IE 10 on touch devices. (CSS grids and scroll snap points!) Let me just say, web apps that follow the Windows 8 UX guidelines are easier to develop and, overall, just feel better to use. That is, they feel like they belong inside Windows 8.

From that perspective, I think they're doing the right thing.

statictype5• 14 years ago

I'd be interested in learning how they implemented the UI - it looks like it's native to Windows 8 but runs just as well on Windows 7. Would be interested to hear what toolkit they used. So far, the UX has been impressive for a tool that has historically not run very well on Windows.

Edit: They've mentioned the toolkits used at the bottom of the page. Apparently this is written in C#.

xpaulbettsx7• 14 years ago

The UI was implemented using WPF4 and Blend. We also use a framework called Caliburn Micro as well as a framework I wrote called ReactiveUI which orchestrates connecting the UI to data via binding.

statictype5• 14 years ago

Thanks for the info. It looks like you chose to embed Chromium for rendering markdown? What was the reason for not using an embedded IE instance (which is already part of every Windows installation).

aschearer• 14 years ago

It looks great and I am installing it now on Windows 8. I'm curious why you chose to use Caliburn Micro over, say, MVVMLight? Do you plan to share some of the technical decisions made for this product on GitHub's Blog?

Edit for spelling

urza2• 14 years ago

Nice! :) Did you used some component for the window like http://wpfwindow.codeplex.com/ or is it manually designed?

nknight14• 14 years ago

Are you serious? I ask this out of genuine ignorance, knowing only a little of what has gone on in the Windows world the last ~4 years. This is what Windows 8 apps are supposed to look like?

gilrain• 14 years ago

It's quite similar, at least, so it'll blend in with native Windows 8 programs (on the desktop, not in Metro).

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/18/3029547/microsoft-windows-...

trun3• 14 years ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted -- this was my reaction as well. Particularly the lack of any sort of top or bottom border makes the app feel very cramped. Also, some of the mouse interactions I've become accustomed to in Win7 don't seem to work (such as dragging a maximized window from one screen to another) but I'm not sure what to blame for that.

killercup• 14 years ago

I guess GitHub's apps are kind of the hipster git clients on all platforms. I don't really like the Mac version (I'm faster in GitX), but this looks actually pretty decent and also what I was expecting for a Metro app. I'll give it a try later to see how productive I can be with it.

SideburnsOfDoom3• 14 years ago

If you run the app, click on the "tools and options" cog then "licences". This page lists a lot of libraries.

> Apparently this is written in C#.

You sound surprised. To me it looks like a quite slick WPF app, which aims for a metro-ish look. But I've seen nothing in the UI that is particularly challenging for WPF. WPF is very, very flexible.

statictype5• 14 years ago

I am surprised (and I say this as a person who has written a lot of C# and likes the language).

I assumed that doing any sort of integration with Git would require C-level bridging. Didn't realize there was any sort of decent C# bindings for Git.

Also, I have not seen very many Windows apps with slick UIs like this that were written in C#. Even the WPF ones that I've seen were quite clunky.

pjmlp• 14 years ago

Great!

For someone that has one foot in both Worlds (UNIX & Windows) this is a welcome addition to my toolset.

harrylove2• 14 years ago

I hope this is the beginning of the end of TFS.

zokier• 14 years ago

Not without VS integration.

MichaelGG• 14 years ago

VS integration is only the start. Easily/automatically integrated build, test, and work item integration is also pretty attractive.

ep103• 14 years ago

Hear hear!

eblackburn3• 14 years ago

+1 (million)

evanw4• 14 years ago

I'm interested to see how the community responds to their choice of ClickOnce as the deployment method.

I use ClickOnce for several of my applications, and I'd say the users who dislike it the most have the highest technical aptitude (which, I'd guess, is a large part of GitHub's user base).

statictype5• 14 years ago

shrug - Honestly, I thought the same thing - and then I only realized GitHub was a ClickOnce app after poking around at the shortcut it created on the Desktop. The installation was pretty seamless.

Splines• 14 years ago

Interesting. What's the usual cause for complaint?

evanw4• 14 years ago

The most common questions/complaints I get are:

- Why can't I find the installation directory? (ClickOnce doesn't use the standard C:/Program Files/ location, it stores program files in C:/Users/<your username>/AppData/Local/Apps/2.0 for security reasons.)

- Why does the installer need a network connection? (ClickOnce downloads the required setup files from the internet.)

The lack of a standard Program Files/.exe deployment also makes it difficult to map filetype associations, which is also a frequent complaint.

I'll likely be going with non-ClickOnce deployments for the future. ClickOnce is great for deploying production software at work, but for a consumer audience, it isn't quite perfect.

(Personally, I really like ClickOnce.)

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Another one I can add is that certain security packages (coughSEPcough) can do weird things to the SXS repos that ClickOnce relies on. This will lead to applications failing to install with pretty much useless error messages.

Granted, this 60/40 blame security software/clickonce, but it was a complaint nonetheless.

Encosia• 14 years ago

As a technical type, I don't mind ClickOnce. Chrome is another good example of a successful ClickOnce application that a lot of technically savvy types use.

I think maybe ClickOnce's drawbacks are less of a sticking point when the application you're installing is one that needs Internet connectivity to be fully functional anyway.

jamesgeck07• 14 years ago

I like ClickOnce just because it has a built-in update method that doesn't necessarily require downloading the entire application installer all over again. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404267.aspx

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to mass update ClickOnce applications apt-get style.

jamesgeck07• 14 years ago

Of course, GH4W's first update _would_ downloaded the entire ~26mb package. I set myself up for that.

lucassouza1• 14 years ago

Great job!

debacle4• 14 years ago

This is very interesting.

Will this tool be able to work with non-github git repositories?

coolowencool• 14 years ago

It picked up on my non-GitHub repos and initially, it seems like I can do all the things I would expect a git repo to do.

olex• 14 years ago

Yes, you can drag-and-drop any git repo folders in it, and it works. However, it only supports one upstream URL per repository.

cool-RR• 14 years ago

I've been expecting this for months, and as I guessed, it's pretty disappointing. I think that SmartGit is a much better GUI for Git on Windows.

Just the fact that it doesn't have keyboard shortcuts is a dealbreaker.

tylermenezes2• 14 years ago

Really? I don't like SmartGit at all? It's so flexible that it's unreasonably difficult to do even simple tasks.

I'm glad Github decided on a core feature set, and made those very easy to access.

masnick• 14 years ago

Agreed, SmartGit is a pain.

Like the Mac app, GitHub for Win doesn't support every single git feature but it makes the ones it does support intuitive and accessible. Props.

eblackburn3• 14 years ago

Good point. If I need the efficiency of a keyboard I will use the git bash cli. I suppose this is why they've bundled powershell git extensions.

It's a first iteration / release. I'm sure with more feedback they'll release more often. I'm unlikely to use this much - because I favour the cli - but I really hope this makes git more accesible to some Windows shops.

ChrisAnn• 14 years ago

Does it allow you to format your commit messages?

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17

eblackburn3• 14 years ago

You're brave sending pull requests to Linus on github for the Linux Kernel from a Windows machine ;)

ConstantineXVI• 14 years ago

Very well done. ClickOnce installer; solid UI (rare on Windows, I've found), and even installs git hooks into PowerShell so there's no need to dump the user into bash (unless they want it).

One downside, not entirely obvious how one's supposed to clone a repo with this?

tylermenezes2• 14 years ago

Hover over the name of the repo and you'll see a clone button.

ineedtosleep• 14 years ago

To be fair, the GitHub for Windows UI looks a lot like the Zune UI, which has been around for a while now. I've not been able to try it yet on my Windows machines, but the screens I've seen look like they borrowed heavily from what Zune had.

generalk• 14 years ago

GitHub for Mac borrows from a lot of good Mac UIs, and it looks like GitHub for Windows does the same from good Windows UIs. Frankly I find this refreshing. I'm tired of applications that build their own interaction layer and then implement that across every platform regardless of that platform's idioms. Or, even worse: Air apps.

jamesgeck07• 14 years ago

It's designed to look like Metro, the style Microsoft is adopting for Windows 8. Zune was an early iteration of Metro.

jstepien• 14 years ago

Finally an application with a UI which really nicely blends with the Windows 8 look and feel. Microsoft should be pleased.

Pewpewarrows• 14 years ago

MetroTwit is the only other app with a great new Metro UI that I've found.

fmystic2• 14 years ago

Don't forget Zune, the OG metro app. Or alternately, the hipster of metro ('was into it before it was cool')

erode2• 14 years ago

There are several, they just don't get much attention these days.

mkuhn2• 14 years ago

Really cool. Looking forward when it will also will allow me to track Issues there.

One problem that is rendering it unusable for me atm though is that it tells me that files contain changes that have not been touched and if I try to discard those changes it actually has no effect. Wanted to report it but found no way to do so on the GitHub for Windows page.

robertszkutak• 14 years ago

I also have this problem. I let it commit and push the commit just to see what would happen and the commit seems to have deleted and then re-added my files. Even after cloning a repository it wants me to make a commit like this. Afterwards it seems to work as expected though.

mkuhn2• 14 years ago

Yeah, seems to be an odd bug. Behavior for me is exactly the same as for you.

drivebyacct215• 14 years ago

I had this problem on Mac as well which is why I used it for all of 15 minutes before giving up. My colleague tried it against my recommendations and before the end of the day he experienced the same thing.

SonicSoul• 14 years ago

great! i've been waiting for a long time for this.

protolif2• 14 years ago

I'm strangely reminded of when people said that Android support would kill Instagram, because of their inferior cameras. (Don't shoot me. I'm an Android user of Instagram.)

base6982• 14 years ago

Was this developed on raw hardware or in a VM running on Linux/Mac?

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

Would it make much difference? Hardware virtualisation is pretty fast, no?

drivebyacct215• 14 years ago

Yeah, why do you ask? It really doesn't matter... at all.

xpaulbettsx7• 14 years ago

Both

shanemhansen• 14 years ago

This is awesome. Personally I'm a linux user so git is one of those rare tools that caters to me, but I've been in a few backwards development shops where git was looked down upon because of inferior tool support on windows when compared to subversion. I'm in favor of anything that helps bring windows users into the git-using fold ;-)

ttrashh• 14 years ago

Nice work xpaulbettsx! Great to see a Caliburn.Micro getting some props. We're using it on a large WPF app now.

How many people were on the team? Did you let Phil write any Xaml?

dstroot• 14 years ago

New to GIT - been using it only about four months. Using Windows 7 as my dev machine. I found learning the command line to not be too bad and haven't even really used the GUI toosl bundled with Msysgit. But I think I'm going to LOVE using this.

kjajula• 14 years ago

A nice addition would be Settings/Preferences where I can add or point to internal company github.

drivebyacct215• 14 years ago

The blog post mentions that it supports GitHub enterprise. You can clone from the web ui or drag and drop existing Git repos.

LocalPCGuy2• 14 years ago

I would like the ability to add multiple folders to the path where it looks for local git repositories. For various reasons, I have repositories clustered in a few different spots on my drive. I tried to use the Windows Libraries, but as expected, it wanted a directory.

jamesgeck07• 14 years ago

You can drag and drop local repos onto the window and it'll pick them up. Not the same as Library support, but it's something.

jasonkester2• 14 years ago

Great news.

I got flamed a month ago [1] for noting how difficult it is to get up and running on GitHub in the Windows world, where things like generating SSH keys aren't exactly part of the daily routine. Glad to hear that they were listening.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871699

drivebyacct215• 14 years ago

"Scary crypto stuff"? So you don't understand how PKI works and you're trying to use distributed source control? (I say this not to be a jerk, but because there aren't exactly a wealth of good alternatives given it is a distributed source control mechanism. PKI comes with the territory and an SSH key generation is part of that)

GitHub doesn't take any more setup than a standard Git setup takes (well, outside of signing up, a very short process anyhow). Install the Git client via the Windows installer, (point and click, a minute, tops). Generate an SSH key. Upload the id_rsa.pub. Done. I mean, it would be one thing if they left users in the dark about this, but I'm fairly sure that the "Thanks for signing up page" links directly to the OS-specific meticulous step-by-step instructions of generating the key.

I'm not sure you understand what it means to be flamed. Every one of the comments is specific about your misconceptions and why signing up for a GitHub account is as trivially easy as signing up for a Twitter account. (Using GitHub as an oAuth account does not require actually uploading a public key)

ctz• 14 years ago

PKI has nothing to do with SSH keys. Github's use of SSH does not use certificates, and github has no certification infrastructure.

eli2• 14 years ago

For many people there Github = git, so saying github isn't much harder to set up than Git isn't saying much.

Using git on Windows has historically not been super fun. The CLI installer mostly works, but it's pretty clunky. Cygwin works fine too, but it's also not especially elegant. At the very least, known of these solutions conform to the expectations of people of the platform. The GUI clients on Windows last I looked (a year ago) were pretty terrible, especially compared to TortoiseSVN, which isn't bad. OS X, on the other hand, had several very nice GUI clients even before the official Github client came out.

andybak3• 14 years ago

I get really sick of this attitude.

None of us want to understand every single domain of knowledge from set theory or quantum physics up to cosmology or social psychology.

I personally have been forced to learn more low-level Unixy things than I ever wanted to. I want to write simple and elegant front and back end code quickly so I can spend my spare time honing UX and other human-facing aspects of my work.

I resent being flamed because I don't fully understand the subtleties of zsh or nginx or or whatever other shiny toy someone else happens to find essential knowledge. Your world might not necessarily be mine.

ncarlson• 14 years ago

> "Scary crypto stuff"? So you don't understand how PKI works and you're trying to use distributed source control?

Is this an honest question, or are you alluding to the idea that someone who doesn't understand PKI should not use distributed source control?

andrewguenther• 14 years ago

You got flamed for that comment because you called generating SSH keys "scary crypto stuff." If that scares you, you probably also enjoy the simplicity of storing passwords in plaintext...

talmand4• 14 years ago

I found some of the responses to be as troubling as some found the original post. The responders made assumptions and didn't bother asking why he called it "scary crypto stuff". He might have had a point since new people to all this might have reacted that way. But who cares about that right?

Roritharr2• 14 years ago

What is your problem with someone being scared of crypto stuff?

I find this shows the necessary respect when dealing with security related tasks, since they are HARD.

I'm not talking about developing crypto related software, but just setting up a "safe" environment where you can store your SSH Keys in a way that doesn't defeat the purpose of using them in the first place is non-trivial, even for people with degrees.

IT Security is a complex field of its own and if a user is afraid of making the wrong choice it only shows that he understands the basics of it.

GlennS2• 14 years ago

I think it would really help you to have a play with command line Git, just to get a feel for what's going on. SSH keys aren't hard to learn and are useful enough to be worth the time spent.

By all means switch to using the GUI after.

swang• 14 years ago

It's not about being unfamiliar with the CLI, it's that Windows isn't like OSX/Linux in that you can just store your keys in a .ssh folder and be done with it (at least not if you don't use cygwin/msys)

The method I chose in Windows was to use pageant (part of Putty) to load the keys. Not sure if I missed this option but you can't autoload keys so when you restart pageant you have to readd the keys (which is not terrible bad, just annoying).

Haven't tried Github For Windows yet but if it fixes the hassle of using ssh keys then I'll probably use it as my main git client for Windows.

junto• 14 years ago

As a Windows user I initially found the setup a little daunting, but the GitHub install guide was a great help and guided me through everything fairly painlessly. If I'm honest about it though, without that help guide, I would have been pretty lost.

The ssh setup is a barrier to entry for a great deal of Windows users, simply because they don't have to deal with such things on a daily basis. Whether they all should know these things is debatable.

I personally couldn't give shit how 'it' works, as long as I don't have to waste my precious time having to learn something I don't need to. I don't want to have to learn machine code for the same reason. We abstract to become more productive. We build on the shoulders of giants. We don't re-invent the wheel. I could go on...

The bottom line is that the previous installation for Windows was manageable, but still it was a drag. Luckily there were enough good resources on the web to help you through it. However, it was time consuming and that barrier has now been removed.

In my opinion that's great. It follows Dieter Rams' principles of good design, namely:

Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.

http://www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/dieterrams/gooddesign

Let's remember that Git is a distributed source control mechanism. It needs to move versioned code around. That is its pure purpose. When the security setup takes more effort than the source control you're doing it wrong.

That being said, the common language of the Git world will remain the command line. The vast majority of examples you will find on the web when you are learning how to use Git will be executed via the command line. That fact in itself means that you should still learn the basic commands and get familiar with git bash.

EDIT: I hope this gives a fairly balanced opinion from a typical Windows Git user. I appreciate that this topic is a heated one.

joelhaasnoot• 14 years ago

Except that the GUI in Git for Windows doesn't support using SSH keys.

hkolek• 14 years ago

I really don't want to get involved in this flamewar but I have one question: You can use github with https and you never have to setup ssh and manage keys. So what's the problem? SSH is not the only choice.

MarkJHagan• 14 years ago

Just ignore the internet warriors below. :). Smile, nod and continue being productive. The GUI saves you time and reduces the learning curve for new developers. If you feel like using the command prompt, you still can.

For my team, which consists of designers and developers, this will make the learning curve of my designers a lot easier.

Saying that because you don't know how to use SSH keys on a windows machine means you can't write secure code is just silly. It is a slippery slope to say that. If the majority of senior guys actually believed it then we wouldn't have a use for higher level languages (ruby, php, etc), frameworks like .net, etc.

martinaglv• 14 years ago

For those of you looking for a nice Git client for Windows, I suggest checking out TortoiseGit[1]. I can't recommend it enough. It is such a powerful peace of software and I am surprised it is not brought up in discussions more often.

http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/

facorreia2• 14 years ago

I really like Git Extensions.

http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/

trun3• 14 years ago

I use TortoiseGit (and was a long time user of TortoiseSVN before that), but I find it to be a poor substitute for the command line. I feel like they tried to make the names of git commands more user friendly, but having already grown accustomed to misnomers like "git checkout" it often takes me a little while to find the right action in TortoiseGit.

slowpoke• 14 years ago

These aren't misnomers, they are intentional. Please read a bit into git before you accuse it of "misnaming" things.

lancefisher2• 14 years ago

Checkout in SVN does not mean the same as it does in git. SVN Checkout is more like Git Clone. Checkout in git means change to a different branch. You "checkout a branch" in git.

I think it is better for TortoiseGit to match the semantics of git rather than match the semantics of TortoiseSVN. It causes some confusion coming from SVN for sure, but once you start using git, you should learn its dialect. It would be worse if TortoiseGit did not match git's vocabulary.

j-kidd• 14 years ago

Perhaps the commands renaming was done to make TortoiseGit more consistent with TortoiseHg and TortoiseBzr?

AhtiK2• 14 years ago

My favourite: http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/

One single powerful window instead of explorer right-click menus, feels more productive for me. Great support for PuTTY (needs some tricks with KiTTY) but also works with openssh.

Revisor• 14 years ago

I came here with that question in mind. What's the difference to the already battle-tested TortoiseGit? GitHub for Win obviously works with other hosting services, that's fine, but is it better?

eliben• 14 years ago

s/peace/piece/ - please!!

mohsen• 14 years ago

not sure about anyone else around here but this fella http://i.imgur.com/Q3d6N.png has popped up twice for me in the first 5 minutes of setting up.

debacle4• 14 years ago

I'm having the same issues. Having trouble adding local repos, pinning repos, and checking out branches.

I already had msys installed, so I'm concerned that GitHub may have tried to install it again, causing conflicts.

skeletonjelly3• 14 years ago

What's in the "view more details" dropdown?

eibrahim2• 14 years ago

Will this work with git repos on bitbucket? I use bitbucket because I can have unlimited private repos for free.

facorreia2• 14 years ago

Yes, it works with any local git repository. I have a git repo linked to bitbucket and I could use this tool to open it and work on it.

artursapek• 14 years ago

Good on Github for not closing it off.

eibrahim2• 14 years ago

I am interested in knowing how you integrated chromium in your .net app??? Could you share that info or blog about it?

AhtiK2• 14 years ago

http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

ataranto• 14 years ago

Chromium Embedded Framework: http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

CefSharp (.NET Bindings): https://github.com/ataranto/CefSharp

xpaulbettsx7• 14 years ago

Yep, use ataranto's fork, ours is hacked up and out-of-date.

mountaineer• 14 years ago

Two attempts, two crashes. Still a little rough.

wildc4rd• 14 years ago

Finally! I've spent many hours scratching my head trying to get connected to github through windows. I'm pleased to see this tool out.

dysoco• 14 years ago

Now we just need GitHub for Linux. Though Linux might not like it.

mkopinsky• 14 years ago

Is there a standalone installer? I am behind a proxy and the installer doesn't seem to get along with Tunnelier.

14:32:19.309 (unrecognized proxy protocol) connection from 127.0.0.1:3743 failed: Unsupported client protocol; the client may be expecting a regular HTTP proxy.

shpoonj• 14 years ago

Very very very confused about why they chose to use an outdated logo for the property.

gadders• 14 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but the name for the Powershell git scripts - posh git - did make me laugh.

jamesgeck07• 14 years ago

Is there any particular reason that it leaves ssh-agent.exe running after it closes?

gte910h• 14 years ago

This is great, windows has a paucity of great git clients (unlike Mac).

guelo• 14 years ago

Seems nice except for how it keeps pushing you to login to github, that would probaby get annoying after a while if working with non-github repos. Also the diffs weren't working with the java files I tried it with, it just minuses and plusses the whole file, hopefully just a bug they can fix. This is my first look at a Windows 8 UI and if this is representative of the fufure I am worried, but it does looks pretty. Overall though this is a good effort.

novalis• 14 years ago

Nice to see this happen. Though Git Bash running on mingw32 actually is very handy, TortoiseGit also does a great job. But it is also good to have options.

pthread• 14 years ago

Funny how most git users out there (at least according to the git user's survery 2011 [1]) use Linux, yet github seems to go out of its way not to build a tool for its majority of users. I would also go as far as to extrapolate and state that most github users are Linux users (which is true for every programmer I know on github).

Would it have been that hard to just use Qt and build a cross platform tool? Or is that not hipster-friendly enough?

I guess it's cool to profit, not that cool to give back. I wouldn't use their tool anyway but I think they're assholes on this one.

[1] https://www.survs.com/results/Q5CA9SKQ/P7DE07F0PL

Wilya• 14 years ago

Instead of building for the existing community, they are trying to expand the toolset to "seduce" other communities. Both are perfectly worthy goals. Just different.

dannytatom• 14 years ago

Making your app feel at home on the host OS is a hipster thing to do now?

toyg2• 14 years ago

The tool for Linux users already exists: it's git itself. Demand for a desktop GUI in the Linux world is almost zero for basically everything, but especially so for a tool like git with no external dependency.

debacle4• 14 years ago

Please, please don't name your installer 'setup.exe'

When I browse to my downloads folder, the most frustrating thing in the world is trying to figure out where 'setup.exe' came from.

1880• 14 years ago

I think it's called that way because of some kind of naming convention that Windows expects from installers?

debacle4• 14 years ago

I have a whole folder full of installers. Only a few of them are named setup.exe.

sriramk• 14 years ago

No such convention. Windows does some funky detection of when the exe might need to elevate privs but it detects anything with the word setup in the filename.

skeletonjelly3• 14 years ago

Nope. But I think it's a part of ClickOnce, the technology they use to bundle up an app into a setup.exe that fetches the latest source from a web server.

cocoflunchy• 14 years ago

It's great - one downside though: it has added a Github folder in "My Documents" that I can't seem to delete. I hate when unwanted folders pop in like that.

LocalPCGuy2• 14 years ago

It was pretty easy to go into the Options and change the default folder, for instance, I have a /git/ folder at the root of my drive with my repos in it.

voxx3• 14 years ago

As a developer, I feel obligated to disagree with anything Windows. I'd honestly rather force people to use Linux or OSX than windows. I'd go so far as to say I would totally exclude Windows users entirely and that I support attempts to make it more difficult for a Windows user to use something.

recursive3• 14 years ago

That is why github will beat your social code management site.

voxx3• 14 years ago

in popularity, but not in functionality or in intelligence of user.

edandersen• 14 years ago

  "GitHub for Windows is a 100% native application"

  "The application is written in C#"

Is managed code the new native?

johns• 14 years ago

"Native" now pretty much means not-web-based or using a cross-platform framework (like Air).

skeletonjelly3• 14 years ago

I'm sorry if this has been asked,

but since this is using your framework, xpaulbettsx, is the source for this going to be available? I always love seeing open source functional applications that use a certain framework or toolkit I'm considering. Makes the divide between reading code/documentation and the end product just seem that whole much closer.

veneratio• 14 years ago

This is good to see some better abstraction for non-experts. While I much prefer the command line interface, guis are a phenomenal way to introduce someone to the "better way". Now we just need good guis!

FreshCode• 14 years ago

Wow, really beautiful Metro application. Thanks GitHub!

gulbrandr2• 14 years ago

I really dislike this ClickOne installer. Where is it installed?

gulbrandr2• 14 years ago

I found github.exe:

  C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\51DBXE19.R1Z\RGNBRRL3.Q0Q\gith..tion_8f45a2159c87c850_0001.0000_c87fd0df5204df40\github.exe

toyg2• 14 years ago

Awesome tool, but I think it shows once more the terrible state of SSH in the Windows world. It's scandalous how MS refuses to make it a first-class citizen on the platform -- it should come pre-installed and pre-configured, or at least with a config wizard, and have simple APIs for third-party apps.

Considering how MS are not really pushing a competitor, I don't understand why they refuse to add such a simple thing. RDP is a completely different tool, and anyway it's not really something you'd expose on the internet, so I don't understand why they can't just integrate OpenSSH -- it's not even GPL!

detay• 14 years ago

Am I the only one having problems on 64-bit windows?

urza2• 14 years ago

Is the app opensource? Looks really nice and I thing it would be great learning app for the c# libraries you used, e.g. to see how you use the reactive extensions..

santa_boy• 14 years ago

is there a way to create a portable version of the windows app?

GitHub for Windows

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