Gitless

Gitless is an experimental version control system built on top of Git. Many people complain that Git is hard to use. We think the problem lies deeper than the user interface, in the concepts underlying Git. Gitless is an experiment to see what happens if you put a simple veneer on an app that changes the underlying concepts. Because Gitless is implemented on top of Git (could be considered what Git pros call a "porcelain" of Git), you can always fall back on Git. And of course your coworkers you share a repository with need never know that you're not a Git aficionado.

Install

Note that the installation won't interfere with your Git installation in any way, you can keep using Git, and switch between Git and Gitless seamlessly.

We currently require Git (1.7.12+) to be installed (but this requirement is going to disappear soon once we finish with our migration to pygit2).

Binary release (macOS and Linux only)

Binary releases for macOS and Linux are available from the Gitless website.

If you've downloaded a binary release of Gitless everything is contained in the gl binary, so to install simply do:

$ cp path-to-downloaded-gl-binary /usr/local/bin/gl

You can put the binary in other locations as well, just be sure to update your PATH.

If for some reason this doesn't work (maybe you are running an old version of your OS?), try one of the other options (installing from source or via the Python Package Index).

Installing from source

To install from source you need to have Python (2.7, 3.2+ or PyPy) installed.

Note to Windows users: Python 3 is not supported yet, see #146 for more info.

Additionally, you need to install pygit2.

Then, download the source code tarball and do:

$ ./setup.py install

Installing via the Python Package Index

If you are a Python fan you might find it easier to install Gitless via the Python Package Index. To do this, you need to have Python (2.7, 3.2+ or PyPy) installed.

Note to Windows users: Python 3 is not supported yet, see #146 for more info.

Additionally, you need to install pygit2.

Then, just do:

$ pip install gitless

Installing via Homebrew (macOS only)

If you are using Homebrew, a package manager for macOS, you can install Gitless with:

brew update
brew install gitless

Installing via Snapcraft (Linux only)

If you are using Snapcraft, a package manager for Linux, you can install the most recent release of Gitless with:

snap install --channel=beta gitless

You can also use the edge channel to install the most recent build.

Documentation

gl -h, gl subcmd -h or check our documentation

Contribute

If you find a bug, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. If you'd like to contribute code, here are some useful things to know:

To install gitless for development, install pygit2, clone the repo, cd to the repo root and do ./setup.py develop. This will install the gl command with a symlink to your source files. You can make changes to your code and run gl to test them.
We follow (to some extent) the Google Python Style Guide. Before submitting code, take a few seconds to look at the style guide and the Gitless's code so that your edits are consistent with the codebase

Finally, if you don't want Travis to be mad at you, check that tests pass in Python 2.7 and 3.2+. Tests can be run with:

pip install nose
nosetests # run tests other than end-to-end tests
nosetests ./gitless/tests/test_e2e.py # run end-to-end tests

xylix / gitless