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Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

gitboxapp.com

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Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#31

Post by dchest »

pornel wrote: post #30
oleganza wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

ZIP on OS X supports symlinks.

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#32

Post by Rygu »

joao wrote: post #7

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.

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.)

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#33

Post by veidr »

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.

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#34

Post by mxcl »

oleganza wrote: post #11
to wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so is that better than gitx?

Gitbox is better because it is a pleasure to use. There are tons of little details which matter in a daily work. For instance, when you switch a branch and try to commit to it, the branch name will be highlighted to remind you that the branch was switched since last commit. If you forgot to switch back, you just cancel the prompt. This little thing instantly eliminates 50% of use cases for "git reset --hard" or "git…

I'll be sure to give it a thorough testing. Thanks for your work.

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#35

Post by mgkimsal »

frou_dh wrote: post #29
masklinn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Git comes with a GUI tool. Run gitk You're not an OSX user are you?

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

Not sure if this is what the OP was getting at, but typing 'gitk' in my OSX terminal nets me "segmentation fault" and has for some time.

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#37

Post by blasdel »

pornel wrote: post #30
oleganza wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Is he really shelling out for every git operation, or are those binaries just extra roughage for technical users?

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#38

Post by sant0sk1 »

iipalindromeii wrote: post #18
microtonal wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#39

Post by masklinn »

frou_dh wrote: post #29
masklinn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Git comes with a GUI tool. Run gitk You're not an OSX user are you?

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

That might be a factor, but no, mainly as in "tk interfaces look and behave dreadfully on OSX, as do pretty much all X applications but even more so, when they accept to work at all".

* Even from on a hot start, gitk takes almost 5s between invocation and startup (on a 2.4GHz MBP) where GitX takes roughly 2s on a cold start (cold-start gitk takes on the order of 10s).

* X applications don't behave in OSX: Divvy's resizing doesn't work, shortcuts don't work well, the menus are all broken (and the "OSX Menu" is that of the X11 application rather than the application's own), etc…

* X applications look horrible, even if you discount the clusterfuck that their interface might be, they redraw poorly and slowly, the areas "bounce" and the transitions tend to not "look right", and the whole widget set looks terribly out of place.

Compare: Gitk http://imgur.com/9mtGu.png, GitX http://imgur.com/xS2DI.png gitk looks like I'm back in 1993.

Re: Gitbox 1.0 released: a version control app for Mac

#40

Post by ardell »

oleganza wrote: post #26
to wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Talk with some web designers who have been looking for a decent gui tool for git. They don't want to learn to use command line and aren't happy with existing tool support. They are your market. Go to a local designer meetup group and sell your software to every one of them.

Iterate on feedback, absolutely, but don't iterate on feedback of hackers, iterate on feedback of people who actually want your software and are in your target market.

If you're dead-set on developers as your market, there are a ton of folks who still use svn with a gui because "no good git guis exist". These are the non-power-users of version control. You're not likely to find them here or on super-technical sites, but they do exist and there are many of them. The unfortunate part is that if you market to them you'll probably end up having to build an Eclipse plug-in.

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