Introduction to GitUI
GitUI is an innovative tool that aims to combine the ease of a graphical user interface (GUI) with the efficiency and speed of terminal operations for Git users. Designed for developers who spend most of their time in terminals, GitUI offers a seamless, intuitive experience for managing Git repositories directly from the command line.
Features
GitUI boasts a variety of features tailored to meet the demands of both novice and experienced developers. Key features include:
- Keyboard-Only Control: GitUI is designed for fast navigation using keyboard shortcuts, eliminating the need for a mouse.
- Contextual Help: Users can access contextual help without memorizing numerous shortcuts.
- Comprehensive Git Operations: GitUI allows users to inspect, commit, amend changes, and supports hooks like pre-commit, commit-msg, and more.
- File Management: Users can stage, unstage, revert, and reset files, hunks, and even individual lines.
- Stashing: Save your current progress, apply it later, or drop it altogether using Git’s stash commands.
- Remote Operations: Seamlessly push and fetch changes from remote repositories.
- Branch Management: Create, rename, delete, and checkout branches with ease.
- Commit History Exploration: Browse and search through commit logs, and view differences between committed changes.
- Responsive UI: The terminal UI is designed to be fast and responsive.
- Async Git API: Offers fluid interactions even with extensive repositories.
- Submodule Support: Facilitates working with projects that include submodules.
- GPG Commit Signing: While support is limited, the feature is available.
Motivation
The motivation behind GitUI stems from the common frustrations developers experience with existing Git GUI applications, especially when dealing with large repositories. These GUIs often become sluggish or even unusable, prompting a return to the terminal. GitUI addresses these frustrations by providing the GUI-like ease directly in the terminal, making it portable, quick, open-source, and cost-free.
Benchmarks
In a performance comparison involving the Linux kernel repository, which comprises over 900,000 commits, GitUI outperformed other tools like lazygit and tig. It parsed the repository in just 24 seconds, used minimal memory (0.17 GB), and exhibited no freezes or crashes, showcasing its robustness and efficiency.
Roadmap
Looking forward, the GitUI team has set specific goals aimed at enhancing the tool’s capabilities:
- Visualization of branching structures in the log tab.
- Implementing interactive rebase functionality.
Known Limitations
Despite its many strengths, GitUI has some limitations:
- No support for sparse repositories.
- Lacks support for git-lfs.
- HTTPS credential helper requires explicit configuration.
While GitUI doesn’t aim to replace the Git shell entirely, it seeks to provide more convenient solutions to often tedious tasks such as stashing and staging. Therefore, contributions and support from the community are highly welcomed.
Installation
GitUI can be easily installed using various package managers on different operating systems, including Arch Linux, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, macOS, and Windows, among others. Detailed installation instructions are available for each platform, ensuring users can set up GitUI quickly. Additionally, release binaries are available for download, providing another straightforward installation option.
Building GitUI
To build GitUI, users need to have rust and cargo installed, with a minimum supported version of 1.70. Certain dependencies such as openssl may require additional tools like perl and a C compiler. For those looking to contribute or explore GitUI further, it can be installed via cargo.
FAQs and Support
For additional assistance, GitUI offers a FAQs section to address common queries and troubleshooting tips. Users can enable logging for diagnosing issues, with log files stored in standard locations depending on the operating system.
Customization
GitUI can adapt to both light and dark terminal themes. Additionally, users can customize key bindings to their preference, including vim-like configurations.
Community and Contributions
GitUI thrives on community contributions, offering various ways to get involved whether through direct contributions, sponsorships, or joining discussions and providing feedback. The project is open to new contributors and maintains a welcoming environment for those interested in enhancing GitUI.
In summary, GitUI presents an exciting opportunity for Git users seeking an efficient, terminal-based tool that integrates the best of GUIs without sacrificing speed or functionality. Through its wide range of features and community-driven development, GitUI continues to refine the version control experience.