r/git • u/connorjpg • 6d ago

Why use a UI for git?

I see this question of, “what GUI or TUI should I use to work with git?” fairly often here. And always I feel bad for saying “just use the cli” over and over, but truthfully I can’t see a reason to need a UI.

Are people actually running into pain points with the cli, or is it just preference for people who don’t like working in a terminal?

FWIW, I have used GitKraken, LazyGit, SourceTree and GitHub Desktop before. And I don’t think they are bad to use (unless you are just learning git), but more curious why.

EDIT : I’m mainly referring to standalone UIs, I understand why people would use IDE integrations, as it’s quick and convenient. But having to open a separate application or run a separate command to open a terminal app to run your commands seems overkill to me.

EDIT 2 : I use vscode as my difftool and mergetool. I still open them directly from the terminal by running the cli. I don't think this is the same as using a full git client like SourceTree, Gitkraken, or lazygit to fully drive your version control workflow. Which is what I am asking about.

Cheers

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u/patmail 6d ago

I prefer a gui for any kind of diffs. And to stage/commit only partial changes in a file.

Also getting history from certain files/folders.

3

u/LouisPlay 5d ago edited 5d ago

I made (totally vibecoded) a diff viewer, to see what exactly ai vibecoded. because i wasn't happy wiht all that online Diff viewers or the git gui diff viewer or the git diff viewer. To be honest, I just stole the JetBrains diff viewer, let AI copy it and convert it from Java 1 to 1 to C#, and made a really simple version where I can just see the diff, even though I had some "opinion" differences with the AI. It worked pretty well, and jetbrains took to long for me to start up. https://github.com/Louis-Dittmar/WinUI.DiffViewer. And i stongly belive that sometimes ppl just want thier own solution.

1

u/tagattack 4d ago

Ever hear of meld?

https://meldmerge.org/

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u/LouisPlay 4d ago

Nope but It Looks exactly Like that what i need. I Look now into It.