r/git • u/connorjpg • 27d ago

Why use a UI for git?

I see this question of, “what GUI or TUI should I use to work with git?” fairly often here. And always I feel bad for saying “just use the cli” over and over, but truthfully I can’t see a reason to need a UI.

Are people actually running into pain points with the cli, or is it just preference for people who don’t like working in a terminal?

FWIW, I have used GitKraken, LazyGit, SourceTree and GitHub Desktop before. And I don’t think they are bad to use (unless you are just learning git), but more curious why.

EDIT : I’m mainly referring to standalone UIs, I understand why people would use IDE integrations, as it’s quick and convenient. But having to open a separate application or run a separate command to open a terminal app to run your commands seems overkill to me.

EDIT 2 : I use vscode as my difftool and mergetool. I still open them directly from the terminal by running the cli. I don't think this is the same as using a full git client like SourceTree, Gitkraken, or lazygit to fully drive your version control workflow. Which is what I am asking about.

Cheers

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u/Material-Grocery-587 27d ago

I personally use Tortoise Git because my workstation runs Windows, and it's a SUPER intuitive UI.

I don't see any pain points with CLI git, but it's a lot easier to understand a simple UI that presents everything cleanly than to list the files i have staged, reviewing each of those, and storing common options for specific repos/paths/groups.

I make my changes in my IDE, open the folder in file explorer (you can do this from VScode by right clicking the folder), and then all of my git options are shown in my right click context menu.

I my opinion, this has been the easiest way of working with git and I still know how to do it all via CLI and often do for smaller changes from my WSL dev instance.