Graphical interfaces

You have learned how to use Git on the command line. The previous section told you how to customize and configure it to make it even more effective. But the terminal is not the end. There are other kinds of environments you can use to manage Git repositories. Sometimes, a visual representation is what you need.

Now, we'll take a short look at the various kinds of user-centered graphical tools for Git; the tour of Git administrative tools is left for the next chapter, Chapter 11, Git Administration.

Types of graphical tools

Different tools and interfaces are tailored for different workflows. Some tools expose only a selected subset of the Git functionality, or encourage a specific way of working with version control.

To be able to make an informed choice selecting a graphical tool for Git, you need to know what types of operations the different types of tools do support. Note that one tool can support more than one type of uses.

First there is a graphical history viewer....