GitKraken is the best cross-platform Git client in 2018! GitKraken's intuitive design increases productivity by simplifying complicated commands, integrating with popular repository hosting sites, and having a built-in code editor and merge tool.
Fast-forward to late 2016, where Tower is a hugely popular Git client on the Mac. In fact, it's the tool of choice for over 80,000 customers around the world like Google, IBM, eBay, Amazon, and Salesforce. We delivered our promise to help thousands of people be more productive with Git and version control.
Over the years, while we were busy serving our customers on the Mac, we received countless requests to bring the same high-quality tool to Windows - with the same tried & tested workflows, the same beautiful design, the same powerful feature set, and the same stability and performance.
From afar, it might have seemed like we were ignoring these requests. But they were too numerous to be ignored. And why should we limit our mission to help people succeed with Git to just one operating system?
So, a couple of years ago, we laid the founding commit for a Windows version of Tower. And today, more than 3,000 commits later, the curtain drops for Tower for Windows!
Why it Took us so Long
As a Windows user, you might have an obvious question for us: 'Why (the hell) did you let us suffer for so long?' Our answer is rather simple, though: 'We wanted to get it right.'
Having written Tower for Mac with only native technologies (Objective-C for that matter), we were long arguing over how to approach a Windows version. Frameworks like Electron might have produced a result faster - but this wasn't what we wanted. We wanted a 100% native experience with Tower for Windows, from the app's performance to its user interface and feature set.
That's why we ended up with 216,724 lines of C# code and a 100% native WPF application.
Also, we didn't want to just 'clone' Tower for Mac. We thought that Windows users deserved better. Therefore, although we a had a wonderfully working user interface and design with our Mac app, we decided to step back and find out what a great Windows app should look and feel like.
Needless to say that this is a very demanding and time-consuming endeavour. But as already said: we want to go the full way and deliver an application that people are able to love.
An Unusual Version 1
In almost all cases, a version 1 is a shy baby step into the world: most likely, it lacks a lot of features and still has to find out what users really want. Not so with this first version of Tower for Windows! Since we've already had many years and literally thousands of conversations with our customers on the Mac, we already knew what a great Git client should look like.
And if you have a look at the long feature list of this new Windows versions, you will find that all the good stuff is already here:
Services Manager
Manage your accounts for GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Visual Studio, Perforce & Beanstalk right from within Tower. Cloning repositories from these accounts becomes a matter of a single click and relieves you from constantly wrestling with usernames, passwords, and authentication tokens!
Undo & Conflict Wizard
A large part of Tower is about confidence: knowing that you can always and easily undo just about everything should help you sleep easy at night. Roll back to previous versions, discard local changes, revert an old revision... or use Tower's unique 'Conflict Wizard' to resolve merge conflicts in a visual way.
Auto-Fetch, Auto-Stash, Auto-Everything
Tower contains many features to make your life easier. For example, automatic fetching in the background keeps you updated on important changes from your coworkers. And automatic stashing asks you at the right time if you want to save those lingering local changes on a Stash.
Features for Pros
Discard single lines of code. Cherry-pick commits. Work with Submodules and git-flow. See unsynced commits at a glance. Tower for Windows lets you access all of Git's power, but in an accessible and easy-to-use interface.
We Have Just Begun
Despite all that, we still have a lot of work to do. On the one hand, even though thousands of beta testers have helped us ship a version 1 that is really awesome, we won't have squashed all the minor bugs and little annoyances. There's still a lot to improve.
On the other hand, we already have an ambitious roadmap of new features and improvements on our desks. Our journey to making the best Git client will probably never end!
Today, we'd like to invite you to join us on this journey: take Tower for a spin and let us know what you think.
Best git clients on windows
Tue, Jul 3, 2012Top 5 of all time
MsysGit
http://msysgit.github.com/This is the most flexible, most hacker points way to use git, but chances are if you are the type of person to do it, you could tell us twelve more awesome things that are possible.
While it’s aimed at power users, quite a lot of effort has been put in to make git more user friendly, with recommendations when you get commands slightly wrong and fairly informative errors.
Highly recommended to use and know well if you aim to do any remote work (ie; via ssh) using git, or any tasks involving automation (say, a mirroring your svn to git), it’s the first choice to make.
Msysgit is a handy little packaging of the git toolset in a cygwin environment. You’ll find yourself stepping out of the typical windows command prompt and into cygwin for every little task, you’ll type ‘ls’ instead of ‘dir’ 9 times out of 10 – and you’ll feel right at home using git in this fashion. Pain points will include ssh keys (you have to get your hands dirty with putty/pagaent, as with many things involving ssh keys on windows), and if you don’t have your merge tool (TortoiseMerge is highly recommended) available, it’s back to manual merging.
Msysgit will help you to debug your git environment by providing a similar set of features as the linux git client.
Eclipse team provider (E-Git)
E-Git. It’s the Eclipse team provider. It’s another fancy it just works solution. Or the first mentioned in this article – take your pick.
If you know how to fly the eclipse market, it’s a snap to get your hands on it. The user experience is just what you’d expect from an IDE solution – it’s a slick experience.
Working with a cloned repo is a breeze, offering a fairly easily understood experience. Of interest, revert via compare isn’t typically offered by other clients, who focus strongly on ‘revert via reset’.
The biggest hassle with be configuring repos if you are used to just typing a remote + refspec; being something you have to do at the very start of your projects.
Other than that minor wrinkle, it’s all fairly straight forward.
One thing to check carefully – does the merging allow you to avoid fast forward merges? A look at the user interface doesn’t really make this clear, and if you need to work without fast forward mering this may be a deal breaker.
Be sure to check out the tutorials for more – http://unicase.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/egit-tutorial-for-beginners.html
NetBeans 7.1+
http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/ide/git.html
If you are looking for an enterprise focused PHP IDE, NetBeans is probably on the shortlist. As of version 7.1 it provides all of the git bells and whistles you can eat.
Git Client For Windows
Kids, don’t take that previous statement as an enticement to eat whistles now.All of the functionality you’d expect is there, and a bit more – setting up private keys is a snap. The integration with the rest of the IDE is top notch and quite comparable to any other source control provider.
Having used TortoiseSVN & family previously, the only fault I have for it is the commit, and merge dialogs – everything else looks nice, but these seem to have fallen down the functionally ugly tree.
When that’s the worst thing you can say about a tool, that’s not too shabby.
TortoiseGit
http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/
The first time I used TortoiseGit, it was version 0.3.3. It certainly didn’t impress in the same way that TortoiseSVN did – the underlying model of git was new to me, no ah hah moments were forthcoming. I quickly found myself at a loss and gave up.
Today I’m more than happy to eat my words. Though you need to install mysisgit before hand (and it can be a little confusing to find exactly the right executable to install), TortoiseGit has achieved a parity of usability with TortoiseSVN – the two will happily co-exist in your toolset.
Why TortoiseGit? I offer you simply this picture:
Seamless integration of the most important git commands, and everything else you could possibly ever want as well right in your window environment – no further than a right click away at all times.
If you use text editors more than IDEs, this is the way to go. Viewing logs, committing, pushing and pulling are all clean, easy experiences – the shared heritage with TortoiseSVN shows through strongly.
Weaknesses include the reliance on mysisgit to set up first, and issue tracker integration can be a bit hit and miss depending on the approach you take via plugins.
Git for IntelliJ
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/version_control.html
Supported out of the box with IntelliJ, git integration is on an equal footing with the Eclipse and Java offerings.
Git Download Mac
About the Author
Daniel O’Connor is an Architect, Software Developer and enthusiastic Open Source contributor.
His experience stems from over 7 years of web oriented and enterprise development, working collaboratively with teams located in Australia, New Zealand, Manila, the US & Europe for financial, mortgage and real estate industry clients, as well as deep involvement with a number of Open Source projects.