I used Github for Mac for quite a while, and just got fed up with stability recently and switched to SourceTree, but I've never looked back. ST does everything I could ever want, and does it extremely well. Not that there's no room in the world for another quality git client, but after using ST, Github for Mac at this point just sort of feels like "My First Git GUI".
That may be Github's intention - to build a simple interface that makes it extremely easy to get your feet wet with GIT. Several of the design decisions they've made - replacing pull and push commands with Sync, automatically stashing changes when switching branches - seem to aim for the simplest possible solution, at the expense of flexibility.
I think they've done a great job on making it simple and approachable. I haven't had stability problems but it is a little sluggish on our medium-sized repo.
I think you are probably right. Especially after reading that Wired article that used Git, version control could be useful for less technical people, and G4M might be great for them, as long as it works. And it certainly looks great.
Here's a great blog post about designing Github For Mac. http://warpspire.com/posts/designing-github-mac/
Basically they didn't want to build an app that maps git commands to buttons. That doesn't make things any easier for anyone.
I think the GitHub app is fantastic, but the stability was definitely an issue. I love that I can use it without having to really know how to use git. (I can use git from the command line just fine, but find the app much nicer when it works)
Similar situation here. I am happy with the CLI, but was looking for a nice Mac GUI for our non-programmer guys. I so wish GitHub for Mac was it, because it's very simple compared to the alternatives (GitBox, SourceTree, Tower). But after trying one of the previous versions out, it routinely crashed even with common operations, so we had to pick one of the worse looking and more complex, but also better working alternatives. Will revisit GitHub for Mac later.
Sorry to hear about the crashing issues. We've done a ton of work on this release to resolve problems like that - give it a go again and see if it works for you now
I use SourceTree too - I tried to use GitHub for Mac, but it requires a 64-bit Mac, which I don't have. Guess they're just too cool for those old systems...it would be nice if they made that clear upfront, so people could save the wasted download. [EDIT - they do point out 64-bit 10.6+ in the header, it's just gray and I didn't notice it.]
Even if SourceTree is a bit more "map the git commands onto buttons" it works well for me when I'm not on my Linux system, and the fact that it handles Hg as well is a nice bonus.
GitHub continues to impress — culture, team, and product. I've heard some criticism of their enterprise sales process but I'm a happy user of their personal edition (though I've somehow already used up my 20 slots for private repos, boo)
And, may I add, their support is great as well. I received great replies and feedback during the implementation of my app, shameless plug: http://worqshop.com
The GitHub app never felt amazing before. I don't know if anyone else had the same experience I did, but it was forever doing weird things when redrawing the window. All gone.
I'm always surprised by how software can feel so, so much better with no new features but just a lot of effort under the hood.
That was a good podcast from an outsiders perspective. Did pick up Posh-git from there, which allows you to have the Git shell in Powershell with tab completion and some nice colors. Pretty good, except that it sometimes is slow, and Powershell doesn't seem to have command recall (up arrow scrolls, doesn't recall commands)
Pressing up arrow in Powershell cycles through the command history on every machine I've used it on (4 or 5). It sounds like there's something unusual with your system.
The only useful thing Github for Mac offers to me is the "Clone in Mac" button in github.com. It somehow changed my workflow of viewing repos on Github. Now I just clone it in my mac and start poking around with the code.
Previous version of Github for Mac was driving me crazy.
I had this big and long unicode text file in one repository. It tried to show it in Changes view but failed. The app then went into "Not Responding" mode using 100% of CPU!
Force quitting it didn't help, because next time you opened the application same thing happened. The app opened with the same repo and changes page and went into "Not responding" mode AGAIN!
I ended up deleting the text file from the repon temporarily!!
Now with the new version the issue is fixed! I'm now happier. Thanks to the Github team.
I wish they would make the "Scan for Repositories" easier to find. I didn't know this existed because it was hidden in settings; why can't it be as easy as "New Repository"?
I really want to use GitHub for mac, but in my experience using it in conjunction with the command line doesn't work well. Just the other day I launched it to look at my diff before pushing, upon launch it complained about a non existent merge conflict, put me on master making me lose uncommitted changes, and resurrected some weird files out of nowhere into my working directory. I feel like every time I open it, it's a surprise.
I had the same experience -- it's so simple and beautiful to use, BUT every time I encountered a merge conflict it somehow wouldn't accept my resolutions, and kept re-generating the same conflict. I'd tried it both in "sync" mode, and in normal push/pull mode, and both of them kept corrupting my repository somehow.
After this happened three times, I switched to SourceTree, which I haven't had any problems with. I think the #1 priority for GitHub for mac is to get the Git functionality itself actually working flawlessly.
(Plus the constant random "empty dict" bug messages, etc., that pop up at random times during the day, even when I've just left it in the background!)
Yeah the app was TERRIBLE at handling merge conflicts and errors. I loved the app until that happened and it would get in a bizarre state and stop working for awhile. Hopefully this fixes it.
Now some love for us Linux guys and I would be so happy.
git-cola! It's developed on Linux and written with power-users in mind. That's why it has vim-style navigation (j/k keys for moving up/down lists) and lots of other niceties.
It's PyQt so it runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
I so want to love GitHub for mac, but after trying to get it to work for two hours today, I'm a bit sore. Such elementary are mistakes in the app— panes not opening, branch popover not responding to clicks, an inexplicable inability of publishing locally created branches to server that it gives out a bad taste. Time to spend some time learning the command line interface, I guess.
I have used github for Mac from day one for cloning and viewing changes. Crashing was never a problem and the "clone in Mac" feature is very handy. I use it primarily as a library tool for all the local repos. When working on one of the projects, I use the cli git tools.
I lost a lot of credibility with a client by recommending that they use github for mac. The app hangs regularly, stashes changes without telling the user. I will take another look at this revision.
The Mac client has been useful keeping slightly-less-technical team members up to date on our codebase (git on the CLI has a few too many sharp edges for some)
I personally use SmartGit for committing and visualizing projects, and sometimes use Github for Mac if I'm just quickly cloning a repo off of their site.
