SimpleGit Beta released - Lazarus based git gui for windows, mac and linux

[macmike]

Hi folks,

I think one of the ways to promote Lazarus is to build awesome apps with it, so I've built a SimpleGit app which provides a simple but powerful user interface for git. I'd welcome any feedback

From the website:

SimpleGit is free to individuals and cheap for enterprises.

Why use it?

• Not used git before?
• Find git hard to use?
• Tired of the command line?
• Want to interact with business users via git?
• Want to make changes, share them, resolve conflicts and get other people's changes simply?
• Want to interact with an enterprise hub like gitlab, stash or even github.com?

Then SimpleGit is for you. SimpleGit doesn't use any of the language of git, it just explains changes, conflicts and resolutions in simple ways with no learning curve between platforms. Check out our Getting Started Guide to see how easy it is.

From a technology point of view I've had to compromise a little because of TProcessExecutor's inability to deal with console level prompts - more info here.

I'd love to see a cross-platform way to find file associations and icons but at the moment I'm rolling my own - of course that does mean it displays Lazarus projects nicely

[macmike]

I'd love to get some feedback on this... as I have some concerns over the executable deployment on various platforms.

I haven't done a big press release or promoted it as much as I could because it's a beta so most traffic is from this forum or the application gallery.

I've seen:

• 100s of hits on the website
• 10s of downloads (interestingly 61% win, 21% linux, 18% mac)

This sort of decline is normal in my experience. However when the app starts it contacts my server to see if there's an upgrade available, this shows that there's only 1's of users.

So, it looks like only a 1/4 of the people who download this app run it for 10 seconds or longer (updates are checked 10s after startup) or it just doesn't run on their platform. (I've had one error report about an EAccessViolation during startup).

Unfortunately I can't tell if it either just doesn't work or people don't find it useful. It would be incredibly useful if members of this forum would run the app and report if it worked, or didn't, on their platform.

[macmike]

v0.9.3 released (Win, Linux and Mac) which fixes a startup bug and makes the windows version a bit more stable.

Dug out an old XP box and found that ssh misbehaves on xp but it should be fine on Vista and above.

[Leledumbo]

Can it be used for both browsing and committing? I currently use 2 git apps for those (gitk for browsing, git-cola for committing) and I will be really happy to use single app as replacement.

[macmike]

Yes, it's not just a browser it also does committing and conflict resolution. It'll also keep track of when the master has commits you don't have and allow you to pull them (if you want).

[mse]

Here is another Free Pascal based git frontend, MSEgit:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mseuniverse/

[Graeme]

I currently use 2 git apps for those (gitk for browsing, git-cola for committing) ...

I use the standard tools included with git:  'gitk'   and   'git gui'    and they can launch each other, so even though they are two apps, they work very well together - feeling like one tool, but with multiple "views". Not to mention that they have features (command line parameters, etc) that most other GUI frontend's simply don't have (and probably never knew existed) - making them even more useful. I've tried more GUI frontends than I care to remember, and ALL of them are bloated, too limited, too memory hungry, too slow or something similar. The standard GUI tools might not look the prettiest, but they simply work the best and get the job done fast - and are available on all platforms. Oh, and for about 80% of my git usage, I use the command line directly. Again the benefit is the same syntax on all platforms, so no need to relearn tools when I hop between platforms.

Either way, this is not to discourage the author of SimpleGit. New tools are always welcome, but I do recommend you read the man pages on gitk and 'git gui' to see what the standard tools already can do - then implement those features, AND try and improve on them (more features). We don't need more "simple" (read very basic and limited) GUI tools - git is already simple to use as-is.

[macmike]

Thanks for the thoughts Graeme but SimpleGit will never be a git front end that is feature complete (in git terms) as it's not aimed at technical git users instead it's a deliberate simplification of git business users.

SimpleGit's main target audience is people who are not at all comfortable with the command line. I've seen a real need for a truly simple client with businesses that I work with - that's why I've written it.

Architecturally, it's actually git agnostic - all git interactions are handled by a TGitAdapter class and I intend to extend the interface across over scm tools such as svn.

One happy side effect of SimpleGit for techies is that on Windows it configures ssh agent properly so that all standard git commands will work from the windows command line with ssh origins.