7 ms·

For the sake of discussion, can we get some contrarian views? I'm using magit, along with tig, plain git and sometimes (!) even plain "vc", depending on contex

For the sake of discussion, can we get some contrarian views? I'm using magit, along with tig, plain git and sometimes (!) even plain "vc", depending on context. I'm in the camp that thinks it's ok and it's pretty comfortable to use within emacs, but I don't see the earth shattering praise I see every time it's mentioned here. Tig for example is so much faster for history and blame perusal that I find it faster to keep it open in another terminal and just switch to it. Altenatives? Contrarians?

rich_sasha 5y ago
I use emacs and git, and never got on with magit. Not entirely sure why, but here's a braindump: - I generally dislike layers on layers; while I seriously hate the git UI, I'd rather learn that, as it's a more portable skill, than learn another UI, that relies on emacs and a package installed. First thing I do on e.g. a new cloud instance is clone a bunch of stuff, and often work on an under-setup machine for a while. For similar reasons, I don't use shells like Fish, which, nice as they may be, funnel me into something totally incompatible with good old sh. Bash and zsh, as far as I use them, are compatible. - I work in tmux, and emacs in terminal, the overhead of switching to a terminal and typing some git stuff is tiny. - I tried magit and just didn't get it. I couldn't couldn't find a happy path where I thought, "ah yes this is niice".
- jolmg 5y ago
  > - I tried magit and just didn't get it. I couldn't couldn't find a happy path where I thought, "ah yes this is niice". I mostly use plain git instead of Magit, for more or less the same reason, although I like git's UI. I did find a happy path, though. Magit's blame interface is very nice to recursively call git-blame and navigate history of pieces of code. I ended up making a CLI program to improve git blame[1] so that I didn't end up switching to Magit just for that, but doing git-blame from Magit is still better. [1] https://github.com/jolmg/git-reblame https://github.com/jolmg/git-reblame
- laserlight 5y ago
  > I generally dislike layers on layers; while I seriously hate the git UI, I'd rather learn that I'm surprised to hear this. Magit is a very thin layer on top of git. Not thin in the technical sense, but in UI/UX sense. Keybindings map almost one to one with git CLI. Arguments to the git CLI are explicitly stated. Executed git command is reported. I learned git better by using Magit.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > I'd rather learn that, as it's a more portable skill, than learn another UI, that relies on emacs and a package installed FWIW, most Magit commands have 1:1 correspondence with git commands; when I'm worried I'm doing something with Magit that I wouldn't be able to replicate with CLI, I just press '$' to pop up the "process buffer", i.e. the buffer containing actual git commands being executed, along with their output. Conversely, I still read git documentation to figure out more advanced Magit workflows. My way of looking at it is, Magit is just an ergonomics layer on top of git - it doesn't introduce new abstractions, it just lets you do stuff in a more efficient and interactive way. The love comes from that efficiency - the improvement is big enough to make a qualitative difference and affect the way I interact with git. (And, of course, you can just press !! and type in whatever git CLI command you want, to run in context of your repository.) > the overhead of switching to a terminal and typing some git stuff is tiny. Switching cost is low, but typing cost is much greater. Of course, everyone has their own preferences. I personally swear by Magit, and I'd love to have more command line tools be integrated with equivalent interface. Magit's UX paradigm isn't a total replacement for all CLI - but it's perfect for tools you repetitively invoke with different parameters to sculpt something.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    > Switching cost is low, but typing cost is much greater. That typing cost is why I use a GUI. While many times I can just enter `git add -u` into the terminal, there's still plenty of times where I want to be selective about what goes into the commit. If a simple glob pattern can't do it, then I'm going to reach for the GUI where I can just click on all the things I want to add to the commit in far less time than it would have taken to type all of the file names. The GUIs also keep me immediately informed on the state of my repo. On the terminal, I'll be running `git status` a lot, just to be sure the state I think the repository in in and the actual state match up.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Yup. But then, clicking time (or rather, navigating your mouse) is also slow. Where Magit shines is in being a GUI (a TUI), so you're always informed on the state of the repo, but it's also fully keyboard operated, so you don't have to click on things. The popup-based paradigm for keyboard operation helps with discoverability - first few times around, you'll be going slow to learn what key does what, but after that, you'll be issuing most commands from memory.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  I'm not a terminal maximalist, but most git actions are easy to perform from the terminal. Switching to a terminal and typing the right git command has little overhead, and it's a universal way of doing things.
AJRF 5y ago
I get the same impression using org mode vs hearing people talk about it. It's great! but the way it's talked about makes you think it will change your life and finally stop you being a lazy procrastinating fool. It's very cool and flexible and doesn't tie you in to any big tech provider (yay!), but it's just an outliner at the end of the day.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I like org mode, I use it every single day, and I'd agree most of the time. 9/10 I'm using it as a glorified markdown editor, but on that 1/10 occasion where I get to do something really cool is where it feels magical.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I'm not going to post anything "contrarian," so to speak, because this really does seem to be an excellent tool. I will say that I won't be using it, as I use GUI tools, with a far smaller "power" level, and use command-line Git for the few times I need anything fancy.
caskstrength 5y ago
I'm not familiar with tig. Is it convenient for staging chunks of code or even individual lines? Interactive rebase including re-splitting commits? Cherry-picking stuff? While working on kernel I sometimes get "looks nice, but can you reorder and re-split this 15-patches series in completely different way?" and magit is a big time-saver for that. It wasn't as useful on my previous jobs where 1k-lines commits with message like "Implement feature X" were the norm, though.
- VMG 5y ago
  chunk/line staging: yes interactive rebase: no cherry-picking: yes
jimbobimbo 5y ago
I'm using Visual Studio Code for basic git functionality and switch to Visual Studio proper when I have to deal with gnarly merges. Merge UX is fantastic in VS.
bentcorner 5y ago
I picked up Sublime Text + Merge a few months ago (I wanted Sublime Text and figured I'd try out Merge since the bundle was cheaper), and it turns out I use Sublime Merge way more. (Sublime Text is fine but for my workflow it has a bunch of gaps with Visual Studio that I haven't been able to fill). Sublime Merge and vscode + git plugins are pretty close to each other but Sublime Merge does everything I need with less fuss. vscode just has some rough edges due to it's swiss-army knife approach that Sublime Merge doesn't.
jidiculous 5y ago
I can't imagine (haven't tried it so I'm just speculating here) that Magit functions very comfortably on something like a deep clone of the Linux repo, but I think there would be very few monolithic projects most of us would encounter with that kind of lengthy history in our day-to-day work. Maybe some Googlers could weigh in on how their large repos are handled by Magit?
grumpyprole 5y ago
Magit is unfortunately so slow on Windows that it's unusable. This is a real shame, because the UI is fantastic. I think a better architecture would use libgit2 calls rather than launching multiple git processes for every single magit operation.
- jolmg 5y ago
  Is the launching of processes on Windows so much slower than on Unix-type OSes that it would cause it to be "so slow" for that reason? Maybe the reason is another? Personally, I once had Magit act real slow at times because git-annex had added some git hook for something that I didn't need. Just removing that hook improved performance massively. Perhaps something similar is happening. Also, I'm not sure Emacs Lisp can interface directly with C libraries, so using libgit2 might not be an option.
  - dhess 5y ago
    Unfortunately, it's pretty slow on macOS, as well. I love Magit, but there are times when I feel like it's hindering me more than helping due to the performance.
    - brabel 5y ago
      I use it on a low spec MacBook Air, and it works just fine for me... never noticed any kind of slowness. I only work on Emacs in small projects though... so maybe that's why it's fast for me?!
      - grumpyprole 5y ago
        Yes it will depend on repository size.
        dhess 5y ago
        That, and I often have multiple projects open at once. There's a note in the Magit manual about this and how it affects performance, but unfortunately, the workaround means that buffers don't get refreshed and you might see stale information unless you perform a manual refresh.
brabel 5y ago
Ok, let me try. I prefer IntelliJ's git interface. Magit can do everything IJ can, but in IJ, I can find how to do things more easily and it just feels easier to do things, probably because it's much more GUI than text compared to Magit. For example, difficult merges are extremely easy in IntelliJ, I can edit code in the diff view itself while I resolve conflicts... in Magit it requires getting used to the different diff views, something I am still trying to figure out, but it seems trickier to do "in-place" changes in the code. That said: I probably only prefer IJ because I've been using it much longer than I have used Magit... and the difference for me is very small, so I suspect the more I use Magit, the more the gap will close and I may eventually like it even more than IJ.
- gpderetta 5y ago
  Being able to edit the diff directly in the status buffer would be a great additional feature in magit!
- seastonATccs 5y ago
  IntelliJ GIT ui/ux is so completely frictionless it's magical at times. The only downside is that it makes incredibly complex operations trivial that I never learned git from the cli beyond the very basics.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    Really? I tried it yesterday from within Rider and I gave up on it because I couldn't even figure out how to push or pull. Best I could find was fetch. Not the biggest deal since neither of those commands require interacting with the output which makes them equally easy to run from the terminal, but it's strange that they're not available in an immediately obvious place.
    - lima 5y ago
      Ctrl-T for pull, Ctrl-Shift-K for push.
    - shagie 5y ago
incanus77 5y ago
I really like https://gitup.co https://gitup.co.
eddieh 5y ago
My contrarian view: I pronounce it maggot. I think Mag-it sounds weird. That said, I’ve financially backed Magits development (Kickstarter iirc) and I use it almost everyday, but I don’t do merges with it. I’ve had some large merges go really slow thru Magit. So I always do my merges in the terminal using the plain git CLI.

rich_sasha 5y ago

I use emacs and git, and never got on with magit. Not entirely sure why, but here's a braindump: - I generally dislike layers on layers; while I seriously hate the git UI, I'd rather learn that, as it's a more portable skill, than learn another UI, that relies on emacs and a package installed. First thing I do on e.g. a new cloud instance is clone a bunch of stuff, and often work on an under-setup machine for a while. For similar reasons, I don't use shells like Fish, which, nice as they may be, funnel me into something totally incompatible with good old sh. Bash and zsh, as far as I use them, are compatible. - I work in tmux, and emacs in terminal, the overhead of switching to a terminal and typing some git stuff is tiny. - I tried magit and just didn't get it. I couldn't couldn't find a happy path where I thought, "ah yes this is niice".

jolmg 5y ago
> - I tried magit and just didn't get it. I couldn't couldn't find a happy path where I thought, "ah yes this is niice". I mostly use plain git instead of Magit, for more or less the same reason, although I like git's UI. I did find a happy path, though. Magit's blame interface is very nice to recursively call git-blame and navigate history of pieces of code. I ended up making a CLI program to improve git blame[1] so that I didn't end up switching to Magit just for that, but doing git-blame from Magit is still better. [1] https://github.com/jolmg/git-reblame https://github.com/jolmg/git-reblame
laserlight 5y ago
> I generally dislike layers on layers; while I seriously hate the git UI, I'd rather learn that I'm surprised to hear this. Magit is a very thin layer on top of git. Not thin in the technical sense, but in UI/UX sense. Keybindings map almost one to one with git CLI. Arguments to the git CLI are explicitly stated. Executed git command is reported. I learned git better by using Magit.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> I'd rather learn that, as it's a more portable skill, than learn another UI, that relies on emacs and a package installed FWIW, most Magit commands have 1:1 correspondence with git commands; when I'm worried I'm doing something with Magit that I wouldn't be able to replicate with CLI, I just press '$' to pop up the "process buffer", i.e. the buffer containing actual git commands being executed, along with their output. Conversely, I still read git documentation to figure out more advanced Magit workflows. My way of looking at it is, Magit is just an ergonomics layer on top of git - it doesn't introduce new abstractions, it just lets you do stuff in a more efficient and interactive way. The love comes from that efficiency - the improvement is big enough to make a qualitative difference and affect the way I interact with git. (And, of course, you can just press !! and type in whatever git CLI command you want, to run in context of your repository.) > the overhead of switching to a terminal and typing some git stuff is tiny. Switching cost is low, but typing cost is much greater. Of course, everyone has their own preferences. I personally swear by Magit, and I'd love to have more command line tools be integrated with equivalent interface. Magit's UX paradigm isn't a total replacement for all CLI - but it's perfect for tools you repetitively invoke with different parameters to sculpt something.
- ziml77 5y ago
  > Switching cost is low, but typing cost is much greater. That typing cost is why I use a GUI. While many times I can just enter `git add -u` into the terminal, there's still plenty of times where I want to be selective about what goes into the commit. If a simple glob pattern can't do it, then I'm going to reach for the GUI where I can just click on all the things I want to add to the commit in far less time than it would have taken to type all of the file names. The GUIs also keep me immediately informed on the state of my repo. On the terminal, I'll be running `git status` a lot, just to be sure the state I think the repository in in and the actual state match up.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Yup. But then, clicking time (or rather, navigating your mouse) is also slow. Where Magit shines is in being a GUI (a TUI), so you're always informed on the state of the repo, but it's also fully keyboard operated, so you don't have to click on things. The popup-based paradigm for keyboard operation helps with discoverability - first few times around, you'll be going slow to learn what key does what, but after that, you'll be issuing most commands from memory.
yodsanklai 5y ago
I'm not a terminal maximalist, but most git actions are easy to perform from the terminal. Switching to a terminal and typing the right git command has little overhead, and it's a universal way of doing things.

AJRF 5y ago

I get the same impression using org mode vs hearing people talk about it. It's great! but the way it's talked about makes you think it will change your life and finally stop you being a lazy procrastinating fool. It's very cool and flexible and doesn't tie you in to any big tech provider (yay!), but it's just an outliner at the end of the day.

TheFreim 5y ago
I like org mode, I use it every single day, and I'd agree most of the time. 9/10 I'm using it as a glorified markdown editor, but on that 1/10 occasion where I get to do something really cool is where it feels magical.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I'm not going to post anything "contrarian," so to speak, because this really does seem to be an excellent tool. I will say that I won't be using it, as I use GUI tools, with a far smaller "power" level, and use command-line Git for the few times I need anything fancy.

caskstrength 5y ago

I'm not familiar with tig. Is it convenient for staging chunks of code or even individual lines? Interactive rebase including re-splitting commits? Cherry-picking stuff? While working on kernel I sometimes get "looks nice, but can you reorder and re-split this 15-patches series in completely different way?" and magit is a big time-saver for that. It wasn't as useful on my previous jobs where 1k-lines commits with message like "Implement feature X" were the norm, though.

VMG 5y ago
chunk/line staging: yes interactive rebase: no cherry-picking: yes

jimbobimbo 5y ago

I'm using Visual Studio Code for basic git functionality and switch to Visual Studio proper when I have to deal with gnarly merges. Merge UX is fantastic in VS.

bentcorner 5y ago

I picked up Sublime Text + Merge a few months ago (I wanted Sublime Text and figured I'd try out Merge since the bundle was cheaper), and it turns out I use Sublime Merge way more. (Sublime Text is fine but for my workflow it has a bunch of gaps with Visual Studio that I haven't been able to fill). Sublime Merge and vscode + git plugins are pretty close to each other but Sublime Merge does everything I need with less fuss. vscode just has some rough edges due to it's swiss-army knife approach that Sublime Merge doesn't.

jidiculous 5y ago

I can't imagine (haven't tried it so I'm just speculating here) that Magit functions very comfortably on something like a deep clone of the Linux repo, but I think there would be very few monolithic projects most of us would encounter with that kind of lengthy history in our day-to-day work. Maybe some Googlers could weigh in on how their large repos are handled by Magit?

grumpyprole 5y ago

Magit is unfortunately so slow on Windows that it's unusable. This is a real shame, because the UI is fantastic. I think a better architecture would use libgit2 calls rather than launching multiple git processes for every single magit operation.

jolmg 5y ago
Is the launching of processes on Windows so much slower than on Unix-type OSes that it would cause it to be "so slow" for that reason? Maybe the reason is another? Personally, I once had Magit act real slow at times because git-annex had added some git hook for something that I didn't need. Just removing that hook improved performance massively. Perhaps something similar is happening. Also, I'm not sure Emacs Lisp can interface directly with C libraries, so using libgit2 might not be an option.
- dhess 5y ago
  Unfortunately, it's pretty slow on macOS, as well. I love Magit, but there are times when I feel like it's hindering me more than helping due to the performance.
  - brabel 5y ago
    I use it on a low spec MacBook Air, and it works just fine for me... never noticed any kind of slowness. I only work on Emacs in small projects though... so maybe that's why it's fast for me?!
    - grumpyprole 5y ago
      Yes it will depend on repository size.
      - dhess 5y ago
        That, and I often have multiple projects open at once. There's a note in the Magit manual about this and how it affects performance, but unfortunately, the workaround means that buffers don't get refreshed and you might see stale information unless you perform a manual refresh.

brabel 5y ago

Ok, let me try. I prefer IntelliJ's git interface. Magit can do everything IJ can, but in IJ, I can find how to do things more easily and it just feels easier to do things, probably because it's much more GUI than text compared to Magit. For example, difficult merges are extremely easy in IntelliJ, I can edit code in the diff view itself while I resolve conflicts... in Magit it requires getting used to the different diff views, something I am still trying to figure out, but it seems trickier to do "in-place" changes in the code. That said: I probably only prefer IJ because I've been using it much longer than I have used Magit... and the difference for me is very small, so I suspect the more I use Magit, the more the gap will close and I may eventually like it even more than IJ.

gpderetta 5y ago
Being able to edit the diff directly in the status buffer would be a great additional feature in magit!
seastonATccs 5y ago
IntelliJ GIT ui/ux is so completely frictionless it's magical at times. The only downside is that it makes incredibly complex operations trivial that I never learned git from the cli beyond the very basics.
- ziml77 5y ago
  Really? I tried it yesterday from within Rider and I gave up on it because I couldn't even figure out how to push or pull. Best I could find was fetch. Not the biggest deal since neither of those commands require interacting with the output which makes them equally easy to run from the terminal, but it's strange that they're not available in an immediately obvious place.
  - lima 5y ago
    Ctrl-T for pull, Ctrl-Shift-K for push.
  - shagie 5y ago

incanus77 5y ago

I really like https://gitup.co https://gitup.co.

eddieh 5y ago

My contrarian view: I pronounce it maggot. I think Mag-it sounds weird. That said, I’ve financially backed Magits development (Kickstarter iirc) and I use it almost everyday, but I don’t do merges with it. I’ve had some large merges go really slow thru Magit. So I always do my merges in the terminal using the plain git CLI.