Even More Graphical Git Clients

Since my last post about finding a graphical Git client for Ubuntu, I’ve been using the excellent gitg. But here’s four more that I’ve come across since then, most recommended by comments on the previous post:

• qgit, as the name suggests, uses the QT GUI toolkit. qgit is a gitk-style interface for viewing revisions. Before you can see uncommitted changes, you’ll have to open Edit->Settings->Working dir->Diff against working dir. There is committing support, but with a very basic interface. In the Actions menu, you can define custom actions to run other git commands and see their output.
• SmartGIT is a very advanced Git interface that is closed source but free for non-commercial use. I wanted to try this out, but it refuses to run without the Sun/Oracle Java runtime. I didn’t feel like disturbing my OpenJDK installation, and in Ubuntu 11.10 Sun/Oracle Java is no longer supported at all. From the screenshots though, it looks very comprehensive.
• Geany is a simple IDE similar to Gedit. The geany-plugins package in Ubuntu provides GeanyVC, a basic version control plugin for Geany supporting six different VCSs. Once the plugin is enabled, the Tools->VC menu provides simple actions for the current file, directory, and base directory of the repository. The interface is very minimal; viewing any information like the log will open a new document containing raw output from git.
• RabbitVCS provides a set of tools for working with both Git and Subversion. Nautilus file browser and Gedit integration are provided, as well as dialogs for Git actions. I haven’t tested RabbitVCS yet, and the version in the Ubuntu repositories doesn’t support Git. However, instructions and a PPA are available for installing the latest version.

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