GitHub Desktop or Git CLI?

hypnotic_nerd@programming.dev to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 484 points –
159

I don't understand git anyway

Well, you learn four commands and hope for the best.

fetch, reset --hard, checkout -b and cherry-pick?

:-D

Nah, rebase -i, squash, fsck and reflog

Must be an interesting work if you never add, commit or push.

Edit: How the hell did you get the repo without clone?

Pshaw, real programmers write out the contents of .git by hand.

(Also, it was a joke, the last two commands I listed are ones you'll ideally never need in your life)

I was scared of reflog too. Had to use it for the first time recently after I accidentally'd a branch that I hadn't pushed to remote yet. I was so glad that I could recover it all in <5 commands.

reflog saved my life once after a stupid misshap.

All rebase are belong to us (onto, rebase, and ofc interactive) but what's fsck (I don't squash personally)?

Fsck is File System Check - realistically you should never need to use it.

Title text: If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.

  • git pull

  • git add *

  • git commit -m "Some stuff"

  • git push

And occasionally when you mess up

  • git reflog

  • git reset HEAD@{n} (where n is where you wanna roll back to)

And occasionally if you mess up so hard you give up

  • git reset --hard origin/main

And there you go. You are now a master at using git. Try not to mess up.

I really never understood why one would need a GUI for git except for visualizing branches.

I feel like I'm crazy seeing so many people using clicky buttons for tracking files. I need like 4 commands for 95% of what I do and the rest you look up.

You're already programming! Just learn the tool!

And now there's a github CLI tool? I hate to beat a dead horse but Microsoft pushing their extended version of an open source tool/protocol is literally the second step of their mantra.

knowing how to program doesn't mean u need to do things the hard way.

heck the whole point of programming is to make things easier and faster.

FWIW not everyone using source control is a programmer. I've seen artists in game dev using GUI tools to pull new changes and push their assets.

That's fair, there's plenty of uses for source control.

I was speaking from a programming context though, as this is a programming community.

I primarily use GitHub CLI to interact with the GitHub API, not Git. I don't really see it as an extension of the Git CLI, which I use much more frequently. Everything you can do with it can also be done through their REST API.

I use it for things that aren't really git features, like:

Syncing repository admin, pull request, and branch control settings across multiple repositories

Checking the status of self-hosted actions runners

Creating pull requests, auto-approving them

Do you use the command line for everything? Do you edit with vim, view diffs with git diff, browse the web with links or lynx?

GUIs are useful tools. I’m happy with VSCode’s git integration. It’s just what I need for basic stuff like staging files and committing. I use the CLI whenever I want to do something like rebasing because I can type that command faster than I can figure out the GUI, but it would be stupid to artificially force myself to use the CLI for everything because of some kind of principal.

Yeah I actually just prefer the command line, I've never had to force myself to use it. I even tried using VSC for a bit recently but i couldn't get myself to like it. I just use nvim with some plugins in a tmux session now and its productive as hell.

Of course I don't browse the web with the command line. For merging branches, I always merge main into the working branch first, check conflict files, and go through the file finding the diffs and resolving them. I've used merge tools before that were sorta nice but I had my own issues with them.

Maybe it's the type of programming I do. I don't do any web stuff, so file count is down. For larger code bases I keep a non editor terminal up and will grep -re for word/phrase searching, find to look for specific files, etc. I'll occasionally use an IDE, typically eclipse based because embedded, but I don't find myself missing the features they add.

Of course I don’t browse the web with the command line.

That's my point. Browsing the web with a command line tool is obnoxious - you use a GUI for tasks that you find easier/more pleasant to do with a GUI. The difference is where that line is. When I'm reviewing what work I've done and checking through my code for debugging statements and other cruft I don't want to push, I prefer to have a nice tree view of my change set where I can click on an item, see what I've changed, select lines and stage them, select other lines and revert them, etc. I could do all of that with command line tools (though not that many have mouse support) but I already know how to do exactly what I want with VSC so why would I use anything else?

You’re already programming! Just learn the tool!

If someone is incapable of learning the tool, that's an issue if they're a developer. But your statement implies that everyone should use the CLI for everything. My point is that it's a matter of preference. The CLI is not superior and GUIs aren't superior. They're both just tools and if you can get your job done quickly and efficiently, that's all that should matter.

The CLI is scriptable/automatable and unambiguous when sharing instructions with coworkers. Both of these things make it very useful to know the commands. I do agree that it helps in some situations to visualize what is going on with a GUI/TUI though (neogit for nvim or magit for emacs are great if anyone is wondering), it can make things clearer at a glance.

I agree that it is a very useful skill to know how to use the CLI. I agree that every senior developer should know how and every junior should be capable of learning. I vehemently disagree that developers should use the CLI as their regular means of interacting with Git if that is not their preference.

Maybe not a GUI but using a TUI (lazygit) I am certain that I can do everything faster than you could ever do using the CLI. Tbf if a GUI Tool had the same shortcuts it would also be faster.

Checking the diff before commit, solve merge conflicts

Also if it's well integrated into the IDE it feels less like using a separate tool. For 95% of what I do the ide/gui feels better (fetch, pull, push, commit, checkout, merge). Usually just 2-4 clicks and no need to type the branch name (ticket number and then some)

For Reflog, reset I use the terminal.

If I had to start github desktop or another seperate gui I would use the terminal that's integrated into the IDE.

I use LazyGit on the CLI for a "GUI-like" experience. I find it helps me make smaller more meaningful commits. If I'm working on a feature that enhances or fixes other modules in my repo to support, its trivial when done to make multiple clean commits out of the one feature that isolates the changes in functionality to individual commits instead of one medium commit.

On a large enough repo (e.g., monorepo), its a pain to do using git commands.

JetBrains IDEs, I don't remember the last time I used the CLI.

I was looking for this comment. PHP storm and git are like best friends. I very very rarely need to resort to the CLI and generally that's for hard resetting after I screw something up

Good luck doing anything remotely complicated/useful in git with an IDE. You get a small fraction of what git can do with a tool that allows absolutely 0 scripting and automation.

IDE git is less powerful than CLI git. However I'm pretty confident that most people use more features of git by using a GUI.

CLI feature discoverability is pretty awful, you have to go out of your way and type git help to learn new commands.

With a GUI though, all the buttons are there, you just have to click a new button that you've been seeing for a while and the GUI will guide you how to use it.

It sounds like you don't speak from experience. I have all the automation I need. It supports git hooks on top of IDE-only features like code checking.

If I have to fire up my CLI for some mass history rewriting (like changing an author for every commit), or when the repo breaks - so be it. But by not using the CLI I save my fingers and sanity, because committing a bunch of files is several click away with little to no room for error.

I can rebase, patch, drop, rename, merge, revert, cherry pick, and solve conflicts with a click of a button rather than remembering all the commands and whatnot.

I use the cli, but my main goal is to never have to do anything remotely complicated with git. Does it happen sometimes? Of course.

There are automations. You can even add git hooks iirc. Mostly I find the lint and other code quality integrations nice to have in the IDE, since the inline results allow me to navigate directly to the code

Diffing is a lot easier too

CLI
Though I will admit it took me a while to get there
git add -i is where the true magic begins

Learning git will give you the tools to work on projects on any git platform. It doesn't matter if I'm in Forgejo, Gitlab, or Github.

And it will find you the most answers online in case you have a git related question.

GitHub desktop Stan here. Been a software engineer for over a decade and still love my UI tools. GitHub desktop is good enough 99% of the time.

Fork

You have my attention

Do they have a Linux client though?

I wish! The best Linux git gui I have found is SmartGit. I like it, but it's just a little goofy and not free. Fork is better for its ability to very easily stage and/or stash a subset of the current changeset.

Anyone got any suggestions? I tried git-cola and gitkraken. The former I found obtuse and limited, and the latter is not free in addition to somehow making git harder with a pretty gui.

Gitkraken is free as long as the repository is public, which seems like an alright compromise to me. The only problem I had with it was that it was electron. What did it make harder for you?

I just really detest the UI. And I have private repos I have to work with as well.

The best ones I have found for Linux are SmartGit and Sublime Merge, but neither are free in any sense. Sublime Merge is slightly cheaper. SmartGit offers a free "hobby license" but it limits which kinds of repos you can work with.

Gitkraken looks like it might be good but I haven't used it.

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sadly no and i don't think it works through wine

but technically they have a mac client which is basically an expensive version of linux

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I hate coding on Windows, maybe I'll check that out. (My only option is Windows for my work laptop because I need to use a few Windows-only softwares and IT says I'm not allowed to dual boot)

Is running Linux off a USB drive possible? It isn't ideal, but you can still have persistence if needed? There is also WSL, if you don't need a GUI.

After the last windows update WSL gives me a BSoD every time 😭 Pretty sure IT wouldn't appreciate me running Ubuntu off a USB drive but that's a good idea.

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I'd love to like the desktop app, but I just don't understand what it's doing under the hood when I click a button. When I click an icon, is it syncing my changes up as it pulls down, it just pulling down? I guess point and click is more scary to me when prod is on the line.

Why are you syncing directly to prod

I'm not? I just don't like UIs

Prod being on the line meant "I'm on main".

Yeah, I set up branch protection, but I hate the fact that some UIs are all "I know you just want to pull, but let's push while we're at it".

If I may shill for a moment, that's something I like about sublime merge - the buttons mostly map to git commands, and it has a nice log showing the commands it ran and their output.

lazygit:

Freaking love TUIs, it’s like they took the convenience of a GUI and the efficiency of the CLI and merged them. As a Neovim and Lazygit user myself it’s amazing what I can accomplish in but a few keypresses.

Sublime Merge, for most items in the UI it tells you the git command it will use

using LazyGit in tmux has changed my workflow.

instead of: git add . git commit -m 'foo' fg

i just: g ac foo q

and it displays everything neatly

Edit: apparently greater/less than symbols dont render properly on lemmy. so imagine a few (CR)'s and (C-b)'s sprinkled in

Are you able to fall back to normal git commands if you don't know the shortcuts? This sounds awesome until I can't remember the syntax to do something I don't do everyday.

you can run shell commands with :, and there may be a nicer way for git-specific commands which i dont know about.

each 'pane' (such as 'changed/staged files', 'commit log', etc) has its own keybinds, which you can see with ?

I'd use Desktop if it worked, unfortunately recently it decided that I don't have read/write access to a repo I'm working on. Works fine in git CLI so idk what the problem there is.

Laughs in Sourcetree

Sourcetree is still best by far for history browsing, and I'll die on that hill.

I switched to gitextensions, sourcetree had so many bugs that it was getting on my nerves. Gitextensions has a similar layout, it also has the history view. It's not prefect (recently they removed the dark theme because they upgraded some dependency and it didn't work anymore) but it's the best alternative I've found

I'm a huge fan of GitExtensions, especially because it does so little magic.

Sourcetree best for free, thanks bit bucket.

Tower is pretty nice for mac user too. I paid for it for a few versions back when I was coding full time. Now I just stuck to source tree for occasional freelance and personal projects.

GitLens?

GitHub Desktop is literally "Baby's first git GUI".

Personally, GitExtensions... github desktop is a pile of turds but git CLI introduces unnecessary stress precisely when I don't want it.

Yup. I don't care if my workflow is suboptimally slow, I can easily see exactly I'm doing with git extensions.

I really like Sourcetree, been using that for a long time.

Source tree has always been horribly optimized to point of uselessness. Wonder if it’s still shit

What do you mean by this? It works fine for me so far, though I'm not a heavy user.

Same here. Use it regularly at work. For personal projects, I tend to just use the IDE.

I feel those captions are the wrong way round

There are much better git UIs out there.

Definitely, last time I used github's one it could barely do more than push and pull. I'll almost always use a (good!) UI over the git CLI though.

No matter the GUI you use, you're leaving a lot of useful functionality on the table. By their nature, you only get a small fraction of git's features. There are many useful commands I use regularly that are impossible to replicate using GUIs.

A good UI (for you personally) should do all the things you regularly do. Git is a complex and messy enough beast that when I have to use the CLI I'm going off the golden path and copy+pasting something arcane.

It's not like you lose access to the cli when you use a gui. I personally use both

Ohmyzsh with the git plugin is my fave - gaa &amp; gcmsg "a commit" feels like the right level of verbosity for me.

I only use it to clone projects via the Open in GitHub desktop link.

For something with such an horrible interface, it's amazing how often people that create a new interface for it manage to make it worse.

Gitgui is pretty great too if you need a bit of interactivity. It's bare bones and no bullshit but can still do like 90% of what all the other fancy tools can do.

Uh how do i get GH cli to work on Linux? I tried pushing a project and it just asks for a password, and PW support is deprecated

https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-github-with-ssh/adding-a-new-ssh-key-to-your-github-account

Connect an SSH key and use that.

No luck, i tried that and https login and it still asks for a PW when I push

HTTPS

git remote add origin https://github.com/user/repo.git

SSH

git remote add origin git@github.com:user/repo.git

Did you use the correct syntax for SSH?

I'm not sure about the exact commands, but you do something like gh auth login to authenticate the CLI and then something like gh ssh setup to change ssh's config file to authorize using the GH CLI.

Who the fuck codes and is such a terrible coder they are using shitty GitHub desktop?

You can be a perfectly good dev and not enjoy working in the cli, especially when there are good enough alternatives

GitHub desktop is the first thing I recommend whenever someone ducks up their local repo by using eclipse's git integration.

It's so easy even an eclipse user can solve their issue by clicking a simple "sync" button. They don't need to even know how git works.

That's literally the problem being talked about. You need to know how git works to avoid these kinds of problems.

Beginners, probably? I agree it sucks tho, bundling a whole ass browser just for some fancy semi-automated git executions

Right here, brother.

I use the right tool for the job, always. If all I need is to push a branch, then I’d rather use a UI that quickly shows me the changes in a nice diff layout. If I’m doing a pull request review and want to run it locally, I select the branch, pull, and go.

That said, when there are conflicts or tricky merges, or I want to squash a bunch of commits, anything like that, I’ll use the CLI.

It’s not about being above GitHub desktop or being an enlightened CLI user. It is about using the tool that is needed.

I’ve only been writing and releasing software for 15 years, what do I know.

That said, use whatever workflow fits you best! If that’s your hands never leaving the keyboard, rock on! If you instead write code like you’re playing an FPS, enjoy! We all do this because we like it, right? 😊

Why am I not allowed to login to 2 GitHub remote at the same time? Answer me Microsoft