Rise of the Mac Git GUIs
One sign of a developer power tool hitting critical mass is when a wellspring of Graphical User Interfaces explode onto the scene. It looks like Git — the distributed version control system authored by Linus Torvalds — has arrived. It brings with it a bevy of Git clients for Mac OS X.
Some are old, some are shiny new, and some haven’t even officially been released yet. Let’s run them down, shall we?
GitX
GitX may be the oldest of the lot, but this is a powerful and great looking Git client. It features a history viewer, GitHub’s gist integration, and most importantly a great commit interface which allows for easy hunk and single-line commits.
Best of all, it’s totally free & open source! There is a ton of activity on GitHub, most interesting of which is a fork by Brotherbard that adds many experimental features.
Git Tower
Free while still in beta, Git Tower is a commercial application claiming to be “the most powerful Git client for Mac”. Big words, but they’re doing a great job living up to them. Git Tower has a slick interface, a repo manager for easily loading previous projects, remote repo integration, and the list goes on.
Another thing that makes this application special is that they managed to capture FUEL editor Doug Neiner’s ugly mug on the History view screenshot. What are the odds?! :)
Gitbox
Gitbox hosts a bunch of powerful features while maintaining a minimal interface. Anybody who has designed interfaces for software knows how difficult a task that can be.
The app is free for a single repository and $39 for multiple repositories. Its features include single-click operations, automated remote commit fetching, local/remote branches, and external diffing tool integration.
GitMac
We don’t know too much about GitMac since it hasn’t entered its beta stage yet, but its definitely one to keep an eye on as development progresses.
Review
It’s exciting to see the maturation and adoption of a tool as powerful as Git. While graphical interfaces aren’t necessary for us “hardcore developers”, they are really nice for those who could benefit greatly from distributed version control, but have a case of Terminalitis®.
Give these tools a try and be sure to let us know in the comments if we missed any!
Jerod Santo is an Editor at Fuel Your Coding and a contract software developer at RSDi where he works daily with Ruby, JavaScript, and related technologies. He loves shiny toys, powerful tools, and open-source software. Learn more about Jerod by visiting his homepage or following him on Twitter.
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Don’t forget SmartGit which runs on Mac, Windows & Linux. http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/index.html
Thanks Joshua, I hadn’t heard of SmartGit until now. I’ll definitely give it a look!
There is also SourceTree (http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/) which is a Mercurial + Git client for OS X.
Thanks Aziz, yet another one I hadn’t heard of. Good stuff!
Yes, +1 for SourceTree :) Too bad it’s only for Mac, really.
SourceTree is awesome. Uses Mercurial’s names for things, even when using GIT. Also a little harder using some git specific features. Good for basic visualization.
Hey Jerod. Thanks for including GitMac in your article. We actually just entered beta recently.
If you want, check it out at http://gitmacapp.com/download use code FYRC (good for 10 uses)
Your link to the Brotherbard GitX fork is messed up. It has “github/com” instead of “github.com”.
and dont forget gitti
http://www.gittiapp.com/
Don’t forget the open source gitifier which notifies you of updates to git repositories.
http://psionides.github.com/gitifier/
Also git-tower http://www.git-tower.com/ shows some promise as well.
There’s another GitX fork in progress:
http://gitx.posterous.com/
I’ve been using Gity, which is now free/open source:
http://macendeavor.com
How about the built in ones?
git gui
gitk
It’s not strictly a git client since it’s also a full-on IDE, but Aptana Studio 3 is worth an honourable mention for it’s slick git integration.
http://aptana.com/products/studio3
There is also Gity http://gityapp.com/ which looks a lot like what Tower grew out of.
The next question to ask (after “will git reach critical mass”) is “what use a GUI for git?”
None of these do anything except save you a couple keystrokes and often hide what’s really happening. I’ll stick with `git` as my git client.
don’t forget to give a try to the recenlty aquired by atlassian “sourcetree”.
We are currently using GitHub 1.1.2 for mac. It works really great, I believe they just updated their UI last month. I think it is ideal for our firm with a team of 3.
I’m using Tower with over 20 repos in it , and quite a few branches and devs working on them… must say i don’t think i’d still be sane without Tower – fast fixes for issues, great support – I’ve been using it for 6 months,and got offered the beta as soon as I mentioned some issues which were solved in the upcoming version.
best spent $60 in the last 6 months.