Scott Hanselman

GitKraken Pro git client teaming up with NightScout to support Open Source Diabetes software

August 01, 2016 Comment on this post [8] Posted in Diabetes
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GitKraken + NightScout

There's a great new cross-platform Git client available now called GitKraken. It's totally free to download and but the optional Pro version includes some great features like a Merge Conflict editor, profile support to keep work and personal separate and more. It's $6 a month or just $5 a month if you go annually.

We've talked to the folks at GitKraken and we've brokered an amazing deal. My friend Hamid Shojaee who owns Axosoft has always supported open source and is a generous charitable giver. He's always asking about my diabetes and the software I use to manage it. As you may know, I use the open source Nightscout application running in Azure to visualize my blood sugar in near-real-time. My wife and family can see my numbers and support me remotely. If you are diabetic or have anyone with diabetes in your life, you'll quickly find that NightScout is indispensible. For parents of children with diabetes it's truly life-changing.

Since GitKraken is great for Git and working with software hosted on GitHub and Nightscout is all open source and hosted on GitHub partnering up seemed very natural. GitKraken is going to give all the revenue for the first month's sales to the Nightscout Foundation!

As well as providing awesome additional features, upgrading to GitKraken Pro is an opportunity to help raise money and increase awareness for the Nightscout Foundation, a nonprofit that is improving the lives of people and families affected by type 1 diabetes, through their support and creation of open source diabetes management systems.

So, until August 28, 2016, 100% of first month revenues from the sales of GitKraken Pro will be donated to the Nightscout Foundation. There is no upper limit to how much money Axosoft will donate for the month, but we’ll be making a minimum commitment of $5,000!

GitKraken is written in Electron and is totally cross-platform. It's tree-view is a standout feature in my opinion and makes it a lot easier to visualize complex repositories and branches.

GitKraken

Again, it's free but you can optionally upgrade to Pro if you like it and want some more advanced features. And, for the next month if you do upgrade GitKraken to Pro you'll be helping the Nightscout Foundation support the development of opens source software to fight diabetes!


Sponsor: I want to thank Stackify for sponsoring the blog this week, and what's more for gifting the world with Prefix. It's a must have .NET profiler for your dev toolbox. Do yourselves a favor and download it now—free!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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August 01, 2016 17:09
I have played around with it about a month ago. It was very promising, so much so I asked my whole dev team to give it a go so we could standardise on a git client. (Supporting GitFlow out of the box was a plus.) (Right now there is a mixture of GitExtension, SourceTree and SmartGit).

At the time there were just too many small issues getting in the way, which meant that after a week we were all back to using our old tools. I really hope Gitkraken improves and succeeds so I will be keeping a close eye on its developement.

Some of the issues we had at the time were:

- One-way feedback. i.e. you send them feedback but they will not acknowledge anything. Instead they should create a uservoice page and allow users to vote on new features. It would also allow them to really find out what is important to developers.

- As the software is still evolving they should provide a bash window, so that if worse comes to worse we can still enter commands from the command line, from within the app. (i.e. a power user mode).

- The diff tool should show differences within a line (not just the whole line)

- Speed was an issue. We have over 80 repos and switch between a subset of them often during the day. The time it took to load and display a repo was too slow.. (I know this might be harsh but waiting 5 secs or more before you can do something when you are in the middle of coding, really slows you down.)

- More shortcut keys (and make them configurable. Please allow users to vote on which shortcuts they feel are important).

Having said that, there were also a lot of positives, and I think they are definitely heading in the right direction.
Ben
August 01, 2016 18:19
Read this post and have tried this tool.
I found only one good thing: neat UI. It's really, really slow... Even when tried open `About` window - it freezes for 4-6 seconds. Any click adds small, but very annoying lag.
Tools like this must improve developer productivity, but don't slow it down.
In my opinion it's very, very bad idea to write desktop apps using js\vebview. Right tools for the right tasks. It's sad to look at where the entire industry is moving.
August 02, 2016 0:03
@Pavel,

It seems that you are experiencing something unusual with GitKraken. I'd like you to contact our support team and see if we can figure out why you are experiencing such slowness. If you could send an email to support@gitkraken.com and get a ticket going so we can get to the bottom of this, I'd appreciate it.

Improving developer productivity is our number one goal!

Michael Robinson, GitKraken Team
August 02, 2016 9:29
Similar to Pavel. I tried it, painfully slow, unusable.
August 02, 2016 12:31
I've been using it since pre 1.0.
It seemed promising, but like Pavel; it was very slow. I tried 1.4 and it was still slow.
I also don't like how cluttered it is. Was hoping for it to be amazing, but i'll still give it some time.

Keep going guys, make it better!
August 02, 2016 14:53
Thank you, First Commenter, for talking negatively about a product in an open forum when the product owners are trying to give money for a noble cause. I mean, they pledged $5,000! That is nutso! They could legitimately lose that money if their first month predictions are off!

I personally will be giving GitKraken a shot. Why? Because dammit, we need more of this in the world.
August 04, 2016 5:22
As a relative Git newbie, I've found this product to be a great way to understand Git better. I must have read a dozen articles about rebase and even listened to Scott explain it in detail but still couldn't fully grok it. Within a few minutes of using GitKraken I had my "a-ha" moment.

I've noticed the responsiveness issue as well at times, mainly with large files or commits with lots of changes. Generally I find it quite okay, though.
August 29, 2016 20:49
Awesome. One more reason to get GitKraken Pro! 🎉

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.