Is there any IDE/GUI support for git-flow on Windows/Linux?

Question

1. Are there any GUI frontends for Git with git-flow support?

Our team uses Eclipse IDE on Windows and Linux. Managed to gradually infect them with git-svn, now looking for the next steps to harness the power of real branching (rather than git-svn-rebase/dcommit). Git-flow seems more or less what we need now. However some of us still depend on GUI, and it makes everything easier to sell and ramp-up.

So, ideally, I'm looking for an easy way to access it from Eclipse. It does not seem to support it yet—I'm considering adding them as external tools. Ideas are welcome—in or outside Eclipse.

2. If the answer to the above is no, can that be an issue for GUI addicts?

I understand the git-flow tooling is actually very thin, it's easy to actually skip it by doing the 'raw' commands manually with or without GUI (eg. I found it handy to manipulate branches in git).

On one hand, I'd prefer to minimize manual work and reduce room for errors (again considering the team's experience). OTOH, my guess is that we can start just using only the develop/release/hotfix branches (introducing feature branches later), and in this setting, folks would just have to pull/push normally. They would not see much of git-flow - it would merely act as a helper for the guys set up releases and stuff (mostly me:). Does this make sense?

Note: Actually the git-svn/trunk is still there—for more occasional, non-git users. Am planning to keep that in sync with 'develop' (obviously ignoring the merge history by squash merges). Hope this will go smooth—famous last words?

Thorwald

Git on the CLI is really easy and anyone working in IT as a developer should be quickly able to adapt to it without relying on GUI tools. However, Eclipse is pretty bitchy with external changes on files - as soon as the mtime changes a file becomes unsearchable an you'll even have to confirm opening it. – Wadding

@Andrew - thanks for the formatting. – Thorwald

@Wadding you don't have to convince me - sorry if I didn't make myself clear. The point is - there are people looking for UIs as they are used to e.g. TortoiseSvn, and until they realise they should be better of with CLI, it's better to tick that box to reduce politics. It's a bit like saying all programmer should be happy with using Linux and even compile the kernel, yet a lot of them don't. I agree about Eclipse's annoying refresh behaviour by default. – Thorwald

Vote for adding git-flow support to egit at bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=348610 – Brutish

Answer 1

The latest SourceTree(v1.5) has integrated the git-flow. Check it out here http://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/07/17/sourcetree-1-5-going-with-the-flow/

Ailssa

Source tree is Mac, question is for Windows and Linux – Waxwork

SourceTree now has a Windows beta version: blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2013/02/14/… – Aardvark

Answer 2

They have released a windows version.

http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

This has git flow built in :)

Laverne

Answer 3

AFAIK there is no GUI that support git-flow . I develop in Eclipse but use 3rd party GUI's and CLI for git. I too use git-flow, I actually use my own fork with bug fixes and enhancements, and use it from the CLI. I use git GUI for committing, as for a while I used submodules and egit doesn't support that yet and I use gitk for checking my history. And then I use egit when I quickly want to change branches and.or tags.

You can add commands in git gui, maybe something worth to check out.

Waxwork

Source tree is Mac, question is for Windows and Linux – Waxwork

Eclipse supports git flow too – Vitreous

Answer 4

Both this question and Git-Flow-Eclipse at GitHub came up in a websearch for me. It honestly looks pretty immature at this stage, but promises to do what you want, hence my cheap attempt to get more stackoverflow credit. ;-)

Queri

thanks, credit is on the way to you :-) BTW, I decided not to use git-flow, came up my own workflow optimised for CI setup. – Thorwald

Cheers. :-) I'd be interested in hearing about the flow you've used, since what I've seen of git-flow looks a lot like what I've used in CI environments in the past. Developers were expected to run the test suite against their feature branches manually, however, and we often forgot to do that. – Queri

Yeah,am using Jenkins CI,and the issue with git-flow there seemed to be constant creation/fiddling with new jobs(for Release and Feature Branches), as well as keeping history or RBs.I see the benefit of FBs,but we haven't badly needed them.OTOH,am building multiple product lines off the same source.So,we have a 'main' branch(similar to develop),with a CI job pipeline optimized for it.Near a release we merge down to the corresponding RBx,where we bump versions,tag,etc..The RB[xyz] branch stays linear,with CI pipeline set up for each.After release-> merge back to main.For bigger features... – Thorwald

.. we do use FBs, but usually only one at a time.We have a "slot" for this on the CI,ie a pipeline of jobs named "feature-(build|test|codehealth,etc..), which we can be easily reconfigured when another big is being tackled feature(using a central setting). For smaller things we just use main (as opposed to git-flow which requires everything to go FBs, not directly to 'develop'). The benefit is minimal CI maintenance, easy enough navigations, pipelines optimised for the current focus,and straightforward archiving via Jenkins Promote 'build'. – Thorwald

Answer 5

I downloaded and installed Source Tree Beta Version 0.8.2.0. This version does not seem to support GitFlow at the moment.

Proceed

Meanwhile GitFlow is supported by SourceTree for Windows. – Proceed

Answer 6

The question is old and answered... but still there is smartGit/HG from syntevo. (I don't have anything to do with them... I just love their UI / approach to git). They have a (IMHO) super integration of git flow.

Attractive

Answer 7

There is Gitflow Nightly git-flow add-on for Egit of Eclipse: https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/gitflow-nightly

Davita