On a day-to-day basis, I tend to spend a fair bit of time using the Git Shell for general purpose work in my Git repositories. This can be a bit hairy for those new to Git, however, and so I’ve been trying out a few different ways to visualize a Git repository. While the GitHub Desktop client is pretty slick for initial setup of a Git account on Windows, it’s still a bit bare bones for my taste.
A few months back I saw some information on Axosoft’s Git client called GitKraken. I decided to give the 0.9x release of a stab and am currently on version 1.4.1.
Not only is this client full featured, it’s also free and visually sleek. It makes reviewing the various commits – and their respective changed files and comments – extremely easy, especially among various remote locations across my workstation and GitHub. It’s also available for a multitude of different operating systems beyond just Windows.
If you’re interested in this tool, grab a copy and plug in your GitHub credentials to start pulling in your remote repositories. From there, you can clone your projects to the local workstation, initialize Git Flow, and start getting a nice, clean visualization of the efforts performed by you and your team.
One really handy feature for beginners is the ability to abstract the somewhat goofy Git syntax into graphical commands. Activities such as sub-branching, cherry picking, and editing commit messages are right click options. Fairly snazzy to help teach the concepts and then reinforcing them with the appropriate Git commands.
If you’re looking to break into the world of Git (and GitHub), I’d suggest giving GitKraken a whirl!
