tig VS magit

> I would really like it if Magit was a standalone program, rather than an Emacs package, so that I could just switch to a more reasonable editor.

Always curious with folks who request this whether they've tried `tig` (https://jonas.github.io/tig/)?

Not sure what part of Magit you're looking for, but the basic workflow of jumping to changes and interactive staging works just as well to me in `tig` (with Vim) as Magit.

Use tig. This TUI (terminal user interface) is halfway between the GUI and the command line. It basically does the same thing as the previous command, but it’s easier on the eyes while allowing you to stay in the terminal. It will also make it easier to see the diff for a particular commit.

If you want an interactive commit graph, among other features, look at tig https://jonas.github.io/tig/

https://github.com/jonas/tig is one of the first things I install on a new dev machine. It's a really nice UI for staging files or hunks. Since it's just a companion to the git CLI, it feels much more focused than full-blown git GUIs, and doesn't do anything magical.

Related but I use tig, a TUI, a lot to examine the state of my working tree and index and stage/unstage/reset changes piecemeal. It works great.

I'd like to plug [tig](https://github.com/jonas/tig) for those who don't use emacs. I see lazygit recommended here too, but I've been using tig for years now and love it's simplicity.

Try tig

I'm normally a CLI git (and tig) user.

Magit for using Git - I would be lost without this.

There're multiple solutions like this and I've used some of them over the past years.

- There's obviously the fantastic Magit (https://github.com/magit/magit) which is an Emacs Plugin but you can configure your Emacs start up just with Magic and nothing else so that Emacs is only used as a TUI Git client. I did this for a while.

- There's GitUI written in Rust (https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui) I did use this for a long time but recently switched over to LazyGit for the better Vim bindings and having more features

- LazyGit (https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit) is what I'm using right now and I'm mostly happy

I actually wrote my own in C some years ago called Gitsi (https://github.com/terhechte/gitsi).

One thing that I added that (as far as I know) none of the others have and I sorely miss is VIM number based movements. So you can say 4j and jump 4 selections down. This makes it much faster (for me) to jump to the one file I'd like to commit. I ultimately stopped developing Gitsi because I didn't have the time to implement all the features others had readily available.

I do prefer TUI based Git clients to full blown GUI apps because of the keyboard movement. So I can quickly enter do something and exit, while staying in the terminal

Not exactly what you asked for but if you are an emacs user, magit will make using git so much more pleasant. https://magit.vc/

Generally most IDEs will help you out with basic git tasks without even needing to know commands. There also dedicated GUIs for git.

Though for full time devs just learning how to use plain git isn't that hard. I very rarely have to look up git commands these days. You can limit yourself to the basic commands first.

For the TUI inclined, lazygit [1] and magit (emacs) [2] both have quick and intuitive ways of handling this. They're also both wonderful companions to the git cli for day to day version control.

[1]: https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit

[2]: https://magit.vc/

Then the slowness that you're seeing is probably Windows-specific, and that's why everyone else is telling you that Magit is actually fast.

WSL might make things faster.[1] IIUC, the problem is that starting new processes is much slower on Windows than on Linux/Unix and Magit relies heavily on that. This seems to have plagued Git tooling more generally but maybe this got fixed since then.[2]

[1] https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/58444

[2] https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2395#issuecomment-1710...

You'll want to invest the time in learning Magit, which will change your life once you get the hang of it (and I was a heavy user of Fugitive in Vim previously!), and it's unlikely you'll find a better integration with GDB anywhere else on the planet than with Emacs, though I can't say that empirically. You just need to take the plunge and start learning it, then cut over and take the hit in productivity one day when you're feeling adventurous. You'll ultimately become far more powerful than you've ever been. Especially if you delve into elisp over time. I use Spacemacs, which is bloated and has bugs, but it has so many features that I haven't undertaken the massive endeavor to replace it from scratch yet.