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al404

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 24, 2011
541
35
Novara, Italy
Just got new tower 3 announcement notice, and just find out that now is only subscription base software.
Any alternative?
 
Just got new tower 3 announcement notice, and just find out that now is only subscription base software.
Any alternative?
How about just using the command line?
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-The-Command-Line

Here is a pretty good starter tutorial:

Normally GUI makes everything easier, but I've been through the GUI lane of git and I continually seem to fall back to Terminal, as it is just so much faster / easier in most workflow scenarios.

Besides old school Tower ( have not used it in a couple of years ) I've recently looked at:
https://desktop.github.com/ for teaching new developers, but end up just falling back to Terminal for 'instruction' purposes.


Note: not a teacher, just have a club for software development, been using git since it was called stupid version control.
 
Last edited:
keep using tower v2 and make sure to let fournova (developer) know you're not happy with that subscription model.
for most if not all use cases, the cli and/or ever improving git integration provided by your favourite IDE will suffice.
for diffing, check out kaleidoscope.
 
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Git Kraken is another alternative for a standalone client.

Git has a quite sub optimal CLI interface with little accommodation made for consistency or usability and the official documentation is quite unwelcoming. I always think is a brilliant piece of satire (so good its barely distinguishable from the real thing). So I can understand why one would look for a GUI.
 
I have a license for Tower v2 on the Mac and bought Tower v1 for Windows with the hope that their Windows app will mature more and close the gap to their already very nice Mac version.

The new subscription model is bad because it has no fallback if you don't subscribe anymore. With Jetbrains you get perpetual access to a version if you paid for 12 months after that version has been released and with 1Password the vault becomes read-only but you can still export it into CSV and import in some other app. With Tower 3 you just lose your access to the app. :(
To add insult to injury I would have to pay extra for their Pro subscription because I run my own GitLab CE instance on a little VPS.

I am also looking for alternatives and the Electron-based alternatives GitKraken and GitHub Deskop just don't cut it. I usually leave my Git GUI open in the background and I can't have it eating away my RAM and battery just because it is made by web technology.
Currently, the interesting alternatives are Fork and SmartGit.
Fork is a little younger and still might miss some features here and there but it is a native app and both Mac and Windows versions are currently heavy in feature development. Just check its changelogs!
SmartGit looks like a powerhouse and although it is a Java app it does feel lighter than the Electron alternatives and it looks more native than them.

Fork seems to be free during its still ongoing beta and I don't know what its business model will look like. SmartGit's price is very enterprisy (=expensive) but it allows both single payment purchases or subscriptions. AND it is free for non-commercial use. :)

Personally, I might pick SmartGit. It is already mature on both platforms and after Tower I won't buy a pig in a poke again.
 
Actually a nice feature that I would like is the ability to export PDF version of all changes inside a a commit

Because I often need to share my changelog with someone that is not using git

I did write tower guys letting them know that they just lost one client
 
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Exactly how Adobe lost me.

Github has a link and you can export. I just send a link.

I guess that with GitHub client you need to publish repository on their server
I mainly use git on my local machine, to track changes on my projects
 
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