Show HN: Sublime Merge – A Git client from the makers of Sublime Text

My first impression is extremely positive. Many actions, particularly the kinds of actions that a UI can really help with, are unnecessarily hard in other UIs I've used.

Eg most UIs have a good File History window, but often finding the appropriate file is a lot of work (and by often I mean at least SourceTree, GitKraken and GitExtensions iirc). Eg something like you need to scroll through commits until you found one that happened to have changed that file, then right-click the file, choose file history.

In Sublime, it's just Ctrl+P, fhmyfilename.

I care about stuff like this (same for Blame, and Stage/Commit (which is usually done great though)) because it's the kind of thing UIs are great at. Both invoking the command and using the output is significantly easier and nicer in a UI than it is from the terminal. Eg it's way more important than an extended "Pull" dialog with all kinds of options I don't care about - I can do that just as easily from the terminal, and my editor probably has a button/keystroke for it somewhere too. So far it seems to me that the Sublime folks got their priorities right. Hats off, will probably purchase!

Pretty amazing feat to enter what looks like a saturated market with a product that has a a unique combination of features, is super performant and cross platform. Kudos.

For my needs, GitX (rowanj fork) is still unbeat: http://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ It has the exact right amount of UI complementing the command line, and some delightful features, e.g. amending the last commit is possible via a checkbox below the commit message.

What I don't like about Sublime and now Sublime Merge, is the unusual way of setting preferences by editing files. I understand that hacking in a JSON file has benefits, but if you just want to use that tool, it's tiring having to google how to change a setting. To me, it feels a bit like losing control. E.g. I wanted to check whether SM supports line wrapping—I'm still not sure whether it does, after browsing the available menu items a bit.

Oh yes!

We do have some basics in there right now, you can directly edit commit messages and squash commits without any fuss. Full interactive rebase support will be coming later.

Since you are on a Mac, did you try Gitup? I am disappointed that Sublime Merge didn't take clues from Gitup's interface. I feel it's the most unobtrusive and efficient git GUI to exist.