Live data from Hacker News

Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

fork.dev

21–30 of 173 posts

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#21
I've discovered Fork by looking at my teammate's screen :D

I am very skeptical about any git UI especially anything out of my IDE as switching windows distracts me.

However, after trying it a bit:

- it works and looks much better than SourceTree, GitKraken

- it's free (while I would prefer using a Sublime license model if asked)

- it has GitFlow integration (not a big fan of it, however it gives you a git workflow template out of the box, worth checking)

Thank you, Dan and Tanya, for the hard work!

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#22
post #14
post #12

Looks nice and clean, although useless for me as a Linux user. The one thing I use graphical git client for is resolving merge issues, so something lightweight is nice. Currently I just do it in IntelliJ and hope I already have the project opened. As a side note, I guess the images on the website are fairly small, but they pay for it with tons of jpeg artifacts which does not look clean.

> Looks nice and clean, although useless for me as a Linux user. That's why Electron GUIs are good. People say they are bloated, but at least the program is available for Linux as well.

Even in SE field Linux market is small, that was one of the reasons I've moved out of it as my primary OS

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#23

Alongside a donation link, you should put a "purchase a license" or "purchase a subscription" link. That way, an engineer can upload the resulting receipt to expensify and get reimbursed by their employer. Employers are used to paying for software licenses out of engineering budgets; Donations would generally come out of a different budget managed by someone an engineer doesn't work with day-to-day.

Another +1 for them adding a price to this. It's a really good program and even as a solo indie developer, I want to give them money so they can afford to keep working on it. Customer support takes time too, I've already emailed them about one bug & used up some minutes of the developer's time.

Preferably not a subscription, though. The whole reason I started using Fork is because their competitor Tower switched to a subscription model, so I started looking for competitors. The Fork developers seem keen on keeping it free, so maybe something like the Sublime Text / REAPER model where it has a nag screen on startup but will keep working anyway (useful for us indie developers until the money rolls in). I also like the idea of no internet-based licensing, so if the company ever disappears I can still use the software.

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#24
post #7

What distinguishes it from TortoiseGit on Windows?

I would describe TortoiseGit as file-centric, while most other git Gui tools (including this, judging by the screenshots) are timeline-centric.

With timelines, you are dealing mainly with diffs (what's changed in your working directory, or a commit), and the files involved are just a side effect of that. The files that are unchanged are simply not displayed at all in the UI. This is especially conducive to using the staging area and committing partial files.

Tortoise shows you working directory diffs but only if you ask via several clicks (eg, creating a commit). Because you interact via Explorer, every time-based action is hidden behind context menu.

IMHO about the only thing easier in tortoise is viewing history or blame on a specific file or directory.

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#28
Quick feedback to whoever maintains the web-page.

I'm looking at the introduction, the screenshots and all looks nice. Then at the bottom of the screen I get the text "Download Fork for Mac", and nothing else. No Windows-download.

Had the headline on HN not been explicit about there being a Windows-version, I wouldn't have gone looking... And therefore not found the tiny "For for Windows" navigation item on top of the page. I would have assume this was Mac only and left.

Any reason you different pages, and particularly why you don't show both download links on the bottom of the screen?

I'm pretty sure you're at risk of missing 99% of the potential Windows-users skimming by this page.

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#29
I use Fork on work and also private. Great software. One of the main reasons to switch is the merge/conflict view, which is, at least in my opinion, one of the best out there.

Previously I've used Sourcetree and SmartGit, and even some Git integration in PHPStorm/WebStorm. But for now, Fork is just lit.

If I could I just wish for one thing: mark branches which are only local and have no remote, so you can easily purge old branches after they're merged.

Re: Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

#30
Highly recommend. Switched after another developer at my office mentioned it. I suggested the filter active branch hot key and it was added I believe in less than a week. Comes out of the box with a great dark mode. The way you can view the commits diffs in the program is wonderful as well. It's the one thing I didn't like about git kraken. Which I even had suggested that they add a different view for that and I would have purchased for my whole team.

Take a look at this one. The ability to jump between branches is great with command B.

Keep up the good work. Like people have already mention please make a donate button as I'll gladly donate to encourage the continued work.

Post reply on HN