How Much Do We Want A Decent Version of Git for Windows? T-H-I-S M-U-C-H.

We want it bad. Reeeeeal bad.

Bonanzle is still running on Subversion (via Tortoise), because comparing its UI to the UI for the de facto git standard (msysgit) is like comparing Rails to ASP on Visual Basic. Yes, the difference is that big. Msysgit is ugly as Pauly Shore, most of its windows can’t be resized, it crashes regularly, and trying to decipher the intent of its UI is like reading dead sea scrolls.

Yes, yes, I know: if you don’t like a piece of open source software, you should shut up and fix it. Unfortunately, I’m sort of single-handedly maintaining this web site that has grown to about 150k uniques this month, where two months ago we had about 10k uniques. I can not end world hunger and rescue my cat stuck in a tree.

But if there is any intelligent life out there that has spare programming cycles and the desire to make a huge difference in the world, this is my personal plea that they will consider giving some love to the woebegone msysgit… or maybe just start their own Windows git client, I can’t imagine a real hacker would take more than a week or two to match the featureset of the existing msysgit.

I’d really like to move Savage Beast to github, and I’d really like to collaborate on the other projects that are happening on there, but it just doesn’t make sense to go from a slick, error free, decipherable UI like Tortoise to the meager helpings of msysgit.

I’d happily donate to a project like better Windows git.

Preemptive note to smart alecks: No, I’m not moving to Mac (or Linux) now. There are plenty of reasons why, I’ll tell you all about it some other time. Incidentally, what is the preeminent GUI for git on Mac these days? From what I understand, many of the real hackers are perfectly content using git from the command line…? Shudder to think of reading the diffs and histories.

4 Replies to “How Much Do We Want A Decent Version of Git for Windows? T-H-I-S M-U-C-H.”

  1. “I can €™t imagine a real hacker would take more than a week or two to match the featureset of the existing msysgit.” This is ridiculous.

    Also, complaining on a blog instead of helping where it is appropriate does not sound too clever to me.

  2. Have you considered using Perforce? It’s completely free for entities with less than about 3 or 4 users. And it’s of course as rock solid as it goes, and probably the best/sanest GUI of any version control I know of. That’s what I’m using for my personal projects at home, and couldn’t be happier. =)

  3. @Dscho: Member of the msysgit team, huh?

    I think you’re probably right on both counts — it probably would take longer than two weeks to get all of the functionality up again, but what I mean to guess is that there has to be some badass out there that could at least get a solid UI and the basic functionality (clone, merge, push, etc.) up in not-that-much time.

    And you are 100% correct that it would be more helpful for me to work on coding this myself than just blog about it. That’s why my first disclaimer in the entire post is: “Yes, yes, I know: if you don €™t like a piece of open source software, you should shut up and fix it.” I get that.

    Unfortunately, in the midst of founding a company that has grown from 0 to more than 60k daily pageviews in a couple months time, I truly don’t have a minute in the day that I can take my eye off my main project at this point.

    I have tried to be patient. I was first sold on git after returning from Railsconf about six months ago. I look at Windows git, and saw its state, and settled for Tortoise. I have been periodically checking up on it every month since, but development on it seems to have stagnated — from all indications I can see, it still looks and crashes the same it did six months ago when I returned from Railsconf.

    The reason for writing this post was that I wanted to do my part to be sure that if some hacker out there is picking between open source projects to work on, and they’re wondering whether anyone is wants better Windows git, the answer is HELL YES I WANT IT IN THE WORST WAY. 😉

    Wondering if I could ever convince the github folks to take a stab at this project? It would certainly be in their best financial interests if a decent Windows git existed.

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